/M 


\ 


BY  MEREDITH  NICHOLSON 

THE  MAN  IN  THE  STREET 

BLACKSHEEP !    BLACKSHEEP ! 

LADY    LARKSPUR 

THE   MADNESS  OF  MAT 

THE   VALLEY   OF   DEMOCRACY 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  STREET 


THE 

MAN  IN  THE  STREET 

PAPERS  ON  AMERICAN  TOPICS 


BY 

MEREDITH  NICHOLSON 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1921 


.    • 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
Charles  Scribner*s  Sons 


Published  September,  1921 


corrmcHT,  i»u,  W5,  me,  IB»,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  co. 

COPYRIGHT,  m«,  BY  THE  VALE  PUBLISHING  ASSOCIATION,  IMC. 

COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY  THE  NEW  YORK  EVENING  POST,  INC. 


TMI    8CM1BNER    PRCM 


To 

CORNELIA 


FOREWORD 

My  right  to  speak  for  the  man  in  the  street, 
the  average  American,  is,  I  am  aware,  open  to 
serious  question.  Possibly  there  are  amiable 
persons  who,  if  urged  to  pass  judgment,  would 
appraise  me  a  trifle  higher  than  the  average; 
others,  I  am  painfully  aware,  would  rate  me 
much  lower.  The  point  is,  of  course,  one  about 
which  I  am  not  entitled  to  an  opinion.  I  offer 
no  apology  for  the  apparent  unrelated  character 
of  the  subjects  herein  discussed,  for  to  my  mind 
the  volume  has  a  certain  cohesion.  In  that 
part  of  America  with  which  I  am  most  familiar, 
literature,  politics,  religion,  and  the  changing 
social  scene  are  all  of  a  piece.  We  disport  our 
selves  in  one  field  as  blithely  as  in  another. 
Within  a  few  blocks  of  this  room,  on  the  fifteenth 
floor  of  an  office-building  in  the  centre  of  my 
home  town,  I  can  find  men  and  women  quite 
competent  to  answer  questions  pertaining  to 
any  branch  of  philosophy  or  the  arts.  I  called 
a  lawyer  friend  on  the  telephone  only  yesterday 
[vii] 


FOREWORD 


and  hummed  a  few  bars  of  music  that  he  might 
aid  me  with  the  correct  designation  of  one  of 
Beethoven's  symphonies.  In  perplexity  over 
an  elusive  quotation  I  can,  with  all  confidence, 
plant  myself  on  the  post-office  steps  and  some 
one  will  come  along  with  the  answer.  I  do 
not  mention  these  matters  boastfully,  but 
merely  to  illustrate  the  happy  conditions  of 
life  in  the  delectable  province  in  which  I  was 
born. 

The  papers  here  collected  first  appeared 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  except  "Let  Main 
Street  Alone!"  which  was  published  in  the 
New  York  Evening  Post,  "The  Cheerful  Break 
fast  Table,"  which  is  reprinted  from  the  Yale 
Review  y  and  "The  Poor  Old  English  Language," 
which  is  reproduced  from  Scribners  Magazine. 
The  political  articles  are  sufficiently  explained 
by  their  dates.  They  are  reprinted  without 
alteration  in  the  hope  that  some  later  student 
of  the  periods  scrutinized  may  find  them  of 
interest. 

M.  N. 

INDIANAPOLIS, 
July,  1921. 

[  Vlii  ] 


CONTENTS 


PACK 


Let  Main  Street  Alone  I  I 

James  Whitcomb  Riley  26 

The  Cheerful  Breakfast  Table  65 

The  Boulevard  of  Rogues  92 

The  Open  Season  for  American  Novelists  106 

The  Church  for  Honest  Sinners  139 

The  Second-Rate  Man  in  Politics  150 

The  Lady  of  Landor  Lane  190 

How,  Then,  Should  Smith  Vote  ?  223 

The  Poor  Old  English  Language  263 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 


CERTAIN  questions  lie  dormant  for  long 
periods  and  then,  often  with  no  apparent 
provocation,  assume  an  acute  phase  and 
cry  insistently  for  attention.  The  failure  of  the 
church  to  adjust  itself  to  the  needs  of  the  age; 
the  shiftlessness  of  the  new  generation;  the 
weaknesses  of  our  educational  system — these 
and  like  matters  are  susceptible  of  endless  de 
bate.  Into  this  general  classification  we  may 
gaily  sweep  the  query  as  to  whether  a  small 
town  is  as  promising  a  habitat  for  an  aspiring 
soul  as  a  large  city.  When  we  have  wearied 
of  defending  or  opposing  the  continuance  of  the 
direct  primary,  or  have  found  ourselves  sud 
denly  conscious  that  the  attempt  to  decide 
whether  immortality  is  desirable  is  unprofit 
able,  we  may  address  ourselves  valiantly  to  a 
discussion  of  the  advantages  of  the  provinces 
over  those  of  the  seething  metropolis,  or  take 


'  'THE'  'M'AN  IN   THE  STREET 

the  other  way  round,  as  pleases  our  humor. 
Without  the  recurring  stimulus  of  such  conten 
tions  as  these  we  should  probably  be  driven  to 
the  peddling  of  petty  gossip  or  sink  into  a  state 
of  intellectual  coma. 

There  are  encouraging  signs  that  we  of  this 
Republic  are  much  less  impatient  under  criti 
cism  than  we  used  to  be,  or  possibly  we  are 
becoming  more  callous.  Still  I  think  it  may  be 
said  honestly  that  we  have  reached  a  point 
where  we  are  measurably  disposed  to  see  Ameri 
can  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole.  It  is  the  see 
ing  it  whole  that  is  the  continuing  difficulty. 
We  have  been  reminded  frequently  that  our 
life  is  so  varied  that  the  great  American  novel 
must  inevitably  be  the  work  of  many  hands,  it 
being  impossible  for  one  writer  to  present  more 
than  one  phase  or  describe  more  than  one  geo 
graphical  section.  This  is  "old  stuff/'  and  noth 
ing  that  need  keep  us  awake  o'  nights.  One  of 
these  days  some  daring  hand  capable  of  wield 
ing  a  broad  brush  will  paint  a  big  picture,  but 
meanwhile  we  are  not  so  badly  served  by  those 
fictionists  who  turn  up  their  little  spadefuls  of 
earth  and  clap  a  microscope  upon  it.  Such 

[2] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

novels  as  Miss  Lulu  Beit  and  Main  Street  or 
such  a  play  as  Mr.  Frank  Craven's  The  First 
Year,  to  take  recent  examples,  encourage  the 
hope  that  after  all  we  are  not  afraid  to  look  at 
ourselves  when  the  mirror  is  held  before  us  by 
a  steady  hand. 

A  serious  novel  that  cuts  close  to  the  quick 
can  hardly  fail  to  disclose  one  of  our  most  amus 
ing  weaknesses — our  deeply  ingrained  local 
pride  that  makes  us  extremely  sensitive  to  criti 
cism  in  any  form  of  our  own  bailiwick.  The 
nation  may  be  assailed  and  we  are  philosophical 
about  it;  but  if  our  home  town  is  peppered  with 
bird  shot  by  some  impious  huntsman  we  are  at 
once  ready  for  battle.  We  do  like  to  brag  of  our 
own  particular  Main  Street !  It  is  in  the  blood  of 
the  provincial  American  to  think  himself  more 
happily  situated  and  of  a  higher  type  than  the 
citizens  of  any  other  province.  In  journeys 
across  the  continent,  I  have  sometimes  thought 
that  there  must  be  a  definite  line  where  bragging 
begins.  I  should  fix  it  somewhere  west  of  Pitts 
burgh,  attaining  its  maximum  of  innocent  com 
placency  in  Indiana,  diminishing  through  Iowa 
and  Nebraska,  though  ranging  high  in  Kan- 

[3] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

sas  and  Colorado  and  there  gathering  fresh 
power  for  a  dash  to  the  coast,  where  stout 
Cortez  and  all  his  men  would  indeed  look  at 
each  other  with  a  mild  surmise  to  hear  the  chil 
dren  of  the  Pacific  boast  of  their  landscape  and 
their  climate,  and  the  kindly  fruits  of  their  soil. 
When  I  travel  beyond  my  State's  boundaries 
I  more  or  less  consciously  look  for  proof  of 
Indiana's  superiority.  Where  I  fail  to  find  it  I 
am  not  without  my  explanations  and  excuses. 
If  I  should  be  kidnapped  and  set  down  blind 
folded  in  the  midst  of  Ohio  on  a  rainy  night,  I 
should  know,  I  am  sure,  that  I  was  on  alien 
soil.  I  frequently  cross  Iowa,  Kansas,  and  Ne 
braska,  and  never  without  a  sense  of  a  change 
of  atmosphere  in  passing  from  one  to  the  other. 
Kansas,  from  territorial  days,  has  been  much 
more  strenuously  advertised  than  Nebraska. 
The  very  name  Kansas  is  richer  in  its  connota 
tions.  To  think  of  it  is  to  recall  instantly  the 
days  of  border  warfare;  John  Brown  of  Osa- 
watomie,  the  New  England  infusion,  the  Civil 
War  soldiers  who  established  themselves  on  the 
free  soil  after  Appomattox;  grasshoppers  and 
the  days  of  famine;  populism  and  the  Sockless 

ui 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

Socrates  of  Medicine  Lodge,  the  brilliant,  satiric 
Ingalls,  Howe's  Story  of  a  Country  Town,  Wil 
liam  Allen  White  of  Emporia,  and  A  Certain 
Rich  Man,  down  to  and  including  the  present 
governor,  the  Honorable  Henry  J.  Allen,  be 
yond  question  the  most  beguiling  man  to  sit  at 
meat  with  in  all  America. 


II 

A  lady  with  whom  I  frequently  exchange 
opinions  on  the  trolley-cars  of  my  town  took 
me  to  task  recently  for  commending  Mr.  Sin 
clair  Lewis's  Main  Street  as  an  achievement 
worthy  of  all  respect.  "  I  know  a  score  of  Indi 
ana  towns  and  they  are  not  like  Gopher  Prai 
rie,"  she  declared  indignantly.  "No,"  I  con 
ceded,  "they  are  not;  but  the  Indiana  towns 
you  have  in  mind  are  older  than  Gopher  Prai 
rie;  many  of  them  have  celebrated  their  cen 
tennial;  they  were  founded  by  well-seasoned 
pioneers  of  the  old  American  stocks;  and  an  im 
pressive  number  of  the  first  settlers — I  named 
half  a  dozen — experienced  the  same  dismay  and 
disgust,  and  were  inspired  by  the  same  noble 

tsi 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

ambition  to  make  the  world  over  that  Mr.  Lewis 
has  noted  in  Carol  Kennicott's  case." 

Not  one  but  many  of  my  neighbors,  and 
friends  and  acquaintances  in  other  towns,  have 
lately  honored  me  with  their  views  on  provin 
cial  life  with  Mr.  Lewis's  novel  as  a  text.  Most 
of  them  admit  that  Minnesota  may  be  like  that, 
but  by  all  the  gods  at  once  things  are  not  so  in 
"my  State"  or  "my  town."  This  is  a  habit  of 
thought,  a  state  of  mind.  There  is,  I  think,  some 
thing  very  delightful  about  it.  To  encounter  it 
is  to  be  refreshed  and  uplifted.  It  is  like  meeting 
a  stranger  who  isn't  ashamed  to  boast  of  his 
wife's  cooking.  On  east  and  west  journeys  across 
the  region  of  the  tall  corn  one  must  be  churlish 
indeed  to  repel  the  man  who  is  keen  to  enlighten 
the  ignorant  as  to  the  happy  circumstances  of 
his  life.  After  an  hour  I  experience  a  pleasurable 
sense  of  intimacy  with  his  neighbors.  If,  when 
his  town  is  reached,  I  step  out  upon  the  plat 
form  with  the  returning  Ulysses,  there  may  be 
time  enough  to  shake  hands  with  his  wife  and 
children,  and  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  his  son  in  the 
waiting  motor — (that  boy,  I'd  have  you  know, 
took  all  the  honors  of  his  class  at  our  State 
[6] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

university) — and  it  is  with  real  sorrow  that  I 
confess  my  inability  to  stop  off  for  a  day  or  two 
to  inspect  the  grain-elevator  and  the  new  brick 
yard  and  partake  of  a  chicken  dinner  at  the 
country  club — the  snappiest  in  all  this  part  of 
the  State !  Main  Street  is  proud  of  itself,  and 
any  newcomer  who  assumes  a  critical  attitude 
or  is  swollen  with  a  desire  to  retouch  the  lily  is 
doomed  to  a  chilly  reception. 

My  joy  in  Main  Street,  the  book,  is  marred 
by  what  I  am  constrained  to  think  is  a  ques 
tionable  assertion  in  the  foreword,  namely: 
"The  town  is,  in  our  tale,  called  Gopher  Prairie, 
Minnesota.  But  its  Main  Street  is  the  continua 
tion  of  Main  Street  everywhere.  The  story 
would  be  the  same  in  Ohio  or  Montana,  in 
Kansas  or  Kentucky  or  Illinois,  and  not  very 
differently  would  it  be  told  up  York  State  or  in 
the  Carolina  Hills."  Now  I  should  say  that 
there  are  very  marked  differences  between 
Gopher  Prairie  and  towns  of  approximately  the 
same  size  that  have  drawn  upon  different  strains 
of  foreign  or  American  stock.  Mr.  Lewis  de 
picts  character  with  a  sure  stroke,  and  he  com 
municates  the  sense  of  atmosphere  admirably. 

[7] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

There  are  paragraphs  and  single  lines  that 
arrest  the  attention  and  invite  re-reading,  so 
sharply  do  they  bite  into  the  consciousness. 
One  pays  him  a  reader's  highest  tribute — 
"That's  true;  I've  known  just  such  people." 
But  I  should  modify  his  claim  to  universality 
in  deference  to  the  differences  in  local  history 
so  clearly  written  upon  our  maps  and  the  dis 
similar  backgrounds  of  young  America  that  are 
not  the  less  interesting  or  important  because 
the  tracings  upon  them  are  so  thin. 

Human  nature,  we  are  frequently  assured,  is 
the  same  the  world  over,  but  I  don't  believe  it 
can  be  maintained  successfully  that  all  small 
towns  are  alike.  All  manner  of  things  contribute 
to  the  making  of  a  community.  A  college  town 
is  unlike  an  industrial  or  a  farming  centre  of  the 
same  size.  A  Scandinavian  influence  in  a  com 
munity  is  quite  different  from  a  German  or  an 
Irish  or  a  Scotch  influence.  There  are  places  in 
the  heart  of  America  where,  in  the  formative 
period,  the  Scotch-Irish  exerted  a  very  marked 
influence  indeed  in  giving  tone  and  direction  to 
the  community  life,  and  the  observer  is  sensible 
of  this  a  hundred  years  afterward.  There  are 
[8] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

varied  shadings  traceable  to  early  dominating 
religious  forces;  Catholicism,  Methodism,  Pres- 
byterianism,  and  Episcopalianism  each  impart 
ing  a  coloring  of  its  own  to  the  social  fabric. 
No  more  fascinating  field  is  open  to  the  student 
than  that  offered  by  the  elements  that  have 
contributed  to  the  building  of  American  com 
munities  as,  for  example,  where  there  has  been 
a  strong  foreign  infusion  or  such  a  blend  as  that 
of  New  Englanders  with  folk  of  a  Southern 
strain.  Those  who  are  curious  in  such  matters 
will  find  a  considerable  literature  ready  to  their 
hand.  Hardly  any  one  at  all  conversant  with 
American  life  but  will  think  instantly  of  groups 
of  men  and  women  who  in  some  small  centre 
were  able,  by  reason  of  their  foresight  and 
courage,  to  lay  a  debt  upon  posterity,  or  of  an 
individual  who  has  waged  battle  alone  for 
public  betterment. 

The  trouble  with  Mr.  Lewis's  Carol  Kennicott 
was  that  she  really  had  nothing  to  offer  Gopher 
Prairie  that  sensible  self-respecting  people  any 
where  would  have  welcomed.  A  superficial 
creature,  she  was  without  true  vision  in  any 
direction.  Plenty  of  men  and  women  vastly  her 

[9] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

superior  in  cultivation  and  blessed  with  a  far 
finer  sensitiveness  to  the  things  of  the  spirit 
have  in  countless  cases  faced  rude  conditions, 
squalor  even,  cheerfully  and  hopefully,  and  in 
time  they  have  succeeded  in  doing  something 
to  make  the  world  a  better  place  to  live  in.  This 
is  not  to  say  that  Carol  is  not  true  to  type;  there 
is  the  type,  but  I  am  not  persuaded  that  its 
existence  proves  anything  except  that  there  are 
always  fools  and  foolish  people  in  the  world. 
Carol  would  have  been  a  failure  anywhere.  She 
deserved  to  fail  in  Gopher  Prairie,  which  does 
not  strike  me,  after  all,  as  so  hateful  a  place  as 
she  found  it  to  be.  She  nowhere  impinges  upon 
my  sympathy.  I  have  known  her  by  various 
names  in  larger  and  lovelier  communities  than 
Gopher  Prairie,  and  wherever  she  exists  she  is 
a  bore,  and  at  times  an  unmitigated  nuisance. 
My  heart  warms,  not  to  her,  but  to  the  people 
in  Main  Street  she  despised.  They  didn't  need 
her  uplifting  hand  !  They  were  far  more  valuable 
members  of  society  than  she  proved  herself  to 
be,  for  they  worked  honestly  at  their  jobs  and 
had,  I  am  confident,  a  pretty  fair  idea  of  their 
rights  and  duties,  their  privileges  and  immuni 
ties,  as  children  of  democracy. 
[10] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

Nothing  in  America  is  more  reassuring  than 
the  fact  that  some  one  is  always  wailing  in  the 
market-place.  When  we've  got  something  and 
don't  like  it,  we  wait  for  some  one  to  tell  us  how 
to  get  rid  of  it.  Plunging  into  prohibition,  we  at 
once  become  tolerant  of  the  bootlegger.  There's 
no  point  of  rest.  We  are  fickle,  capricious,  and 
pine  for  change.  In  the  course  of  time  we  score 
for  civilization,  but  the  gains,  broadly  consid 
ered,  are  small  and  painfully  won.  Happiest  are 
they  who  keep  sawing  wood  and  don't  expect 
too  much  !  There  are  always  the  zealous  laborers, 
the  fit  though  few,  who  incur  suspicion,  awaken 
antagonism,  and  suffer  defeat,  to  pave  the  way 
for  those  who  will  reap  the  harvest  of  their  sow 
ing.  There  are  a  hundred  million  of  us  and  it's 
too  much  to  ask  that  we  all  chase  the  same  rain 
bow.  There  are  diversities  of  gifts,  but  all,  we 
hope,  animated  by  the  same  spirit. 

HI 

The  Main  Streets  I  know  do  not  strike  me  as 
a  fit  subject  for  commiseration.  I  refuse  to  be 
sorry  for  them.  I  am  increasingly  impressed  by 
their  intelligence,  their  praiseworthy  curiosity 

__uii_  _  i  «m     m 

as  to  things  of  good  report,  their  sturdy  opti- 

in] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

mism,  their  unshakable  ambition  to  excel  other 
Main  Streets.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  type  of 
village  with  a  few  stores,  a  blacksmith-shop, 
and  a  gasolene  station,  that  seems  to  express  the 
ultimate  in  torpor.  Settlements  of  this  sort  may 
be  found  in  every  State,  and  the  older  the  State 
the  more  complete  seems  to  be  their  inertia. 
But  where  five  thousand  people  are  assembled 
— or  better,  when  we  deal  with  a  metropolis  of 
ten  or  twelve  thousand  souls — we  are  at  once 
conscious  of  a  pulse  that  keeps  time  with  the 
world's  heart-beat.  There  are  compensations  for 
those  who  abide  in  such  places.  In  such  towns, 
it  is  quite  possible,  if  you  are  an  amiable  being, 
to  know  well-nigh  every  one.  The  main  thor 
oughfare  is  a  place  of  fascinations,  the  stage  for 
a  continuing  drama.  Carrier  delivery  destroys 
v  the  old  joy  of  meeting  all  the  folks  at  the  post- 
office,  but  most  of  the  citizens,  male  and  female, 
find  some  excuse  for  a  daily  visit  to  Main 
Street.  They  are  bound  together  by  dear  and 
close  ties.  You've  got  to  know  your  neighbors 
whether  you  want  to  or  not,  and  it's  well  for 
the  health  of  your  soul  to  know  them  and  be  of 
use  to  them  when  you  can. 

[12] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

I  should  regard  it  as  a  calamity  to  be  deprived 
of  the  felicity  of  my  occasional  visits  to  a  par 
ticular  centre  of  enlightenment  and  cheer  that 
I  have  in  mind.  An  hour's  journey  on  the  trolley 
brings  me  to  the  court-house.  After  one  such 
visit  the  stranger  needn'ttroubletoenroll  himself 
at  the  inn;  some  one  is  bound  to  offer  to  put 
him  up.  There  is  a  dramatic  club  in  that  town 
that  produces  good  plays  with  remarkable  skill 
and  effectiveness.  The  club  is  an  old  one  as 
such  things  go,  and  it  fixes  the  social  standard 
for  the  community.  The  auditorium  of  the  Ma 
sonic  Temple  serves  well  as  a  theatre,  and  our 
admiration  for  the  club  is  enhanced  by  the 
disclosure  that  the  members  design  the  scenery 
and  also  include  in  their  membership  capable 
directors.  After  the  play  one  may  dance  for  an 
hour  or  two,  though  the  cessation  of  the  music 
does  not  mean  that  you  are  expected  to  go  to 
bed.  Very  likely  some  one  will  furnish  forth  a 
supper  and  there  will  be  people  "asked  in"  to 
contribute  to  your  entertainment. 

There  are  in  this  community  men  and  women 
who  rank  with  the  best  talkers  I  have  ever 
heard.  Their  neighbors  are  proud  of  them  and 

[13] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

produce  them  on  occasion  to  represent  the  cul 
ture,  the  wit  and  humor,  of  the  town.  Two 
women  of  this  place  are  most  discerning  students 
of  character.  They  tell  stories  with  a  masterly 
touch,  and  with  the  economy  of  words,  the 
whimsical  comment,  the  pauses  and  the  un 
foreseen  climaxes  that  distinguished  the  story 
telling  of  Twain  and  Riley.  The  inhabitants 
make  jokes  about  their  Main  Street.  They 
poke  fun  at  themselves  as  being  hicks  and 
rubes,  living  far  from  the  great  centres  of 
thought,  while  discussing  the  newest  books  and 
finding,  I  fancy,  a  mischievous  pleasure  in 
casually  telling  you  something  which  you,  as  a 
resident  of  the  near-by  capital  with  its  three 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  people,  ought 
to  have  known  before. 

The  value  of  a  local  literature,  where 
it  is  honest,  is  that  it  preserves  a  record 
of  change.  It  is  a  safe  prediction  that  some 
later  chronicler  of  Gopher  Prairie  will  present 
a  very  different  community  from  that  re 
vealed  in  Main  Street.  Casting  about  for  an  in 
stance  of  a  State  whose  history  is  illustrated 
by  its  literature,  I  pray  to  be  forgiven  if  I  fall 

[14] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

back  upon  Indiana.  Edward  Eggleston  was  an 
early,  if  not  indeed  the  first,  American  realist. 
It  is  now  the  habit  of  many  Indianians  to 
flout  the  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  as  a  libel  upon 
a  State  that  struts  and  boasts  of  its  culture 
and  refuses  to  believe  that  it  ever  numbered 
ignorant  or  vulgar  people  among  its  inhabi 
tants.  Eggleston's  case  is,  however,  well-sup 
ported  by  testimony  that  would  pass  muster 
under  the  rules  of  evidence  in  any  fair  court 
of  criticism.  Riley,  coming  later,  found  kindlier 
conditions,  and  sketched  countless  types  of 
the  farm  and  the  country  town,  and  made 
painstaking  studies  of  the  common  speech. 
His  observations  began  with  a  new  epoch — the 
return  of  the  soldiers  from  the  Civil  War.  The 
veracity  of  his  work  is  not  to  be  questioned; 
his  contribution  to  the  social  history  of  his 
own  Hoosier  people  is  of  the  highest  value. 
Just  as  Eggleston  and  Riley  left  records  of 
their  respective  generations,  so  Mr.  Tarking- 
ton,  arriving  opportunely  to  preserve  unbroken 
the  apostolic  succession,  depicts  his  own  day 
with  the  effect  of  contributing  a  third  panel 
in  a  series  of  historical  paintings.  Thanks  to 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

our  provincial  literature,  we  may  view  many 
other  sections  through  the  eyes  of  novelists; 
as,  the  Maine  of  Miss  Jewett,  the  Tennessee 
of  Miss  Murfree,  the  Kentucky  of  James  Lane 
Allen,  the  Virginia  of  Mr.  Page,  Miss  Johnston, 
and  Miss  Glasgow,  the  Louisiana  of  Mr.  Cable. 
(I  am  sorry  for  the  new  generation  that  doesn't 
know  the  charm  of  Old  Creole  Days  and  Ma 
dame  Delphine  /)  No  doubt  scores  of  motorists 
traversing  Minnesota  will  hereafter  see  in  every 
small  town  a  Gopher  Prairie,  and  peer  at  the 
doctors'  signs  in  the  hope  of  catching  the  name 
of  Kennicott ! 

An  idealism  persistently  struggling  to  im 
plant  itself  in  the  young  soil  always  has  been 
manifest  in  the  West,  and  the  record  of  it  is 
very  marked  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  States. 
Emerson  had  a  fine  appreciation  of  this.  He 
left  Concord  frequently  to  brave  the  winter 
storms  in  what  was  then  pretty  rough  coun 
try,  to  deliver  his  message  and  to  observe  the 
people.  His  philosophy  seems  to  have  been 
equal  to  his  hardships.  "My  chief  adventure," 
he  wrote  in  his  journal  of  one  such  pilgrimage, 
"was  the  necessity  of  riding  in  a  buggy  forty- 

[16] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

eight  miles  to  Grand  Rapids;  then  after  lecture 
twenty  more  in  return,  and  the  next  morning 
back  to  Kalamazoo  in  time  for  the  train  hither 
at  twelve."  Nor  did  small  audiences  disturb 
him.  "Here  is  America  in  the  making,  America 
in  the  raw.  But  it  does  not  want  much  to  go 
to  lectures,  and  'tis  a  pity  to  drive  it." 

There  is,  really,  something  about  corn — tall 
corn,  that  whispers  on  summer  nights  in  what 
George  Ade  calls  the  black  dirt  country. 
There  is  something  finely  spiritual  about  corn 
that  grows  like  a  forest  in  Kansas  and  Nebras 
ka.  And  Democracy  is  like  unto  it — the  plow 
ing,  and  the  sowing,  and  the  tending  to  keep 
the  weeds  out.  We  can't  scratch  a  single  acre 
and  say  all  the  soil's  bad; — it  may  be  wonder 
fully  rich  in  the  next  township ! 

It  is  the  way  of  nature  to  be  perverse  and 
to  fashion  the  good  and  great  out  of  the  least 
promising  clay.  Country  men  and  small-town 
men  have  preponderated  in  our  national  coun 
sels  and  all  things  considered  they  haven't  done 
so  badly.  Greatness  has  a  way  of  unfolding  it 
self;  it  remains  true  that  the  fault  is  in  ourselves, 
and  not  in  our  stars,  that  we  are  underlings. 

[17] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

Out  of  one  small  town  in  Missouri  came  the 
two  men  who,  just  now,  hold  respectively  the 
rank  of  general  and  admiral  of  our  army  and 
navy.  And  there  is  a  trustworthy  strength  in 
elemental  natures — in  what  Whitman  called 
"powerful  uneducated  persons."  Ancestry  and 
environment  are  not  negligible  factors,  yet  if 
Lincoln  had  been  born  in  New  York  and  Roose 
velt  in  a  Kentucky  log  cabin,  both  would  have 
reached  the  White  House.  In  the  common 
phrase,  you  can't  keep  a  good  man  down.  The 
distinguishing  achievement  of  Drinkwater's 
Lincoln  is  not  merely  his  superb  realization  of 
a  great  character,  but  the  sense  so  happily 
communicated,  of  a  wisdom  deep-planted  in 
the  general  heart  of  man.  It  isn't  all  just  luck, 
the  workings  of  our  democracy.  If  there's  any 
manifestation  on  earth  of  a  divine  ordering  of 
things,  it  is  here  in  America.  Considering  that 
most  of  the  hundred  million  trudge  along  away 
back  in  the  line  where  the  music  of  the  band 
reaches  them  only  faintly,  the  army  keeps 
step  pretty  well. 


[18] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

IV 

"Myself  when  young  did  eagerly  frequent" 
lecture-halls  and  the  abodes  of  the  high-minded 
and  the  high-intentioned  who  were  zealous  in 
the  cause  of  culture.  This  was  in  those  years 
when  Matthew  Arnold's  criticisms  of  America 
and  democracy  in  general  were  still  much  dis 
cussed.  Thirty  years  ago  it  really  seemed  that 
culture  was  not  only  desirable  but  readily  at 
tainable  for  America.  We  cherished  happy 
illusions  as  to  the  vast  possibilities  of  education : 
there  should  be  no  Main  Street  without  its 
reverence  for  the  best  thought  and  noblest 
action  of  all  time.  But  those  of  us  who  are  able 
to  ponder  "the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
of  all  this  unintelligible  world"  in  the  spirit 
of  that  period  must  reflect,  a  little  ruefully, 
that  the  new  schemes  and  devices  of  educa 
tion  to  which  we  pointed  with  pride  have  not 
turned  the  trick.  The  machinery  of  enlighten 
ment  has,  of  course,  greatly  multiplied.  The 
flag  waves  on  innumerable  schoolhouses;  litera 
ture,  art,  music  are  nowhere  friendless.  The 
women  of  America  make  war  ceaselessly  upon 

[19] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

philistinism,  and  no  one  attentive  to  their 
labors  can  question  their  sincerity  or  their 
intelligence.  But  these  are  all  matters  as  to 
which  many  hear  the  call  but  comparatively 
few  prostrate  themselves  at  the  mercy-seat. 
Culture,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  used  the 
word,  was  not  so  easily  to  be  conferred  or  im 
posed  upon  great  bodies  of  humanity;  the  per 
centage  of  the  mass  who  are  seriously  interested 
in  the  finest  and  noblest  action  of  mankind 
has  not  perceptibly  increased. 

Odd  as  these  statements  look,  now  that  I 
have  set  them  down,  I  hasten  to  add  that  they 
stir  in  me  no  deep  and  poignant  sorrow.  My 
feeling  about  the  business  is  akin  to  that  of  a 
traveller  who  has  missed  a  train  but  consoles 
himself  with  the  reflection  that  by  changing 
his  route  a  trifle  he  will  in  due  course  reach 
his  destination  without  serious  delay,  and  at 
the  same  time  enjoy  a  view  of  unfamiliar 
scenery. 

Between  what  Main  Street  wants  and  cries 
for  and  what  Main  Street  really  needs  there 
is  a  considerable  margin  for  speculation.  I 
shall  say  at  once  that  I  am  far  less  con- 

[20] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

cerned  than  I  used  to  be  as  to  the  diffusion  of 
culture  in  the  Main  Streets  of  all  creation. 
Culture  is  a  term  much  soiled  by  ignoble  use 
and  all  but  relegated  to  the  vocabulary  of  cant. 
We  cannot  "wish"  Plato  upon  resisting  and 
hostile  Main  Streets;  we  are  even  finding  that 
Isaiah  and  St.  Paul  are  not  so  potent  to  con 
jure  with  as  formerly.  The  church  is  not  so 
generally  the  social  centre  of  small  communities 
as  it  was  a  little  while  ago.  Far  too  many  of  us 
are  less  fearful  of  future  torment  than  of  a 
boost  in  the  price  of  gasolene.  The  motor  may 
be  making  pantheists  of  us:  I  don't  know. 
Hedonism  in  some  form  may  be  the  next  phase; 
here,  again,  I  have  no  opinion. 


Mr.  St.  John  Ervine  complains  that  we  of 
the  provinces  lack  individuality;  that  we  have 
been  so  smoothed  out  and  conform  so  strictly 
to  the  prevailing  styles  of  apparel  that  the 
people  in  one  town  look  exactly  like  those  in 
the  next.  This  observation  may  be  due  in  some 
measure  to  the  alien's  preconceived  ideas  of 

[21] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

what  the  hapless  wights  who  live  west  of  the 
Hudson  ought  to  look  like,  but  there  is  much 
truth  in  the  remark  of  this  amiable  friend  from 
overseas.  Even  the  Indians  I  have  lately  seen 
look  quite  comfortable  in  white  man's  garb. 
To  a  great  extent  the  ready-to-wear  industry 
has  standardized  our  raiment,  so  that  to  the 
unsophisticated  masculine  eye  at  least  the 
women  of  Main  Street  are  indistinguishable 
from  their  sisters  in  the  large  cities.  There  is 
less  slouch  among  the  men  than  there  used  to  be. 
Mr.  Howells  said  many  years  ago  that  in  travel 
ling  Westward  the  polish  gradually  dimmed  on 
the  shoes  of  the  native;  but  the  shine-parlors 
of  the  sons  of  Romulus  and  Achilles  have 
changed  all  that. 

I  lean  to  the  idea  that  it  is  not  well  for  us 
all  to  be  tuned  to  one  key.  I  like  to  think  that 
the  farm  folk  and  country  town  people  of  Geor 
gia  and  Kansas,  Oklahoma  and  Maine  are 
thinking  independently  of  each  other  about 
weighty  matters,  and  that  the  solidarity  of 
the  nation  is  only  the  more  strikingly  demon 
strated  when,  finding  themselves  stirred  (some 
times  tardily)  by  the  national  consciousness, 
[22] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

they  act  sensibly  and  with  unity  and  concord. 
But  the  interurban  trolley  and  the  low-priced 
motor  have  dealt  a  blow  to  the  old  smug  com 
placency  and  indifference.  There  is  less  tobacco- 
juice  on  the  chins  of  our  rural  fellow  citizens; 
the  native  flavor,  the  raciness  and  the  tang  so 
highly  prized  by  students  of  local  color  have 
in  many  sections  ceased  to  be.  We  may  yet 
be  confronted  by  the  necessity  of  preserving 
specimens  of  the  provincial  native  in  social 
and  ethnological  museums. 

I  should  like  to  believe  that  the  present  with 
its  bewildering  changes  is  only  a  corridor  lead 
ing,  politically  and  spiritually,  toward  some 
thing  more  splendid  than  we  have  known.  We 
can  only  hope  that  this  is  true,  and  meanwhile 
adjust  ourselves  to  the  idea  that  a  good  many 
things  once  prized  are  gone  forever.  I  am  not 
sure  but  that  a  town  is  better  advertised  by 
enlightened  sanitary  ordinances  duly  enforced 
than  by  the  number  of  its  citizens  who  are 
acquainted  with  the  writings  of  Walter  Pater. 
A  little  while  ago  I  should  have  looked  upon 
such  a  thought  as  blasphemy. 

The  other  evening,  in  a  small  college  town, 

[23] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

I  passed  under  the  windows  of  a  hall  where 
a  fraternity  dance  was  in  progress.  I  dare  say 
the  young  gentlemen  of  the  society  knew  no 
more  of  the  Greek  alphabet  than  the  three 
letters  inscribed  over  the  door  of  their  club 
house.  But  this  does  not  trouble  me  as  in  "the 
olden  golden  glory  of  the  days  gone  by."  We 
do  not  know  but  that  in  some  far  day  a  prowl 
ing  New  Zealander,  turning  up  a  banjo  and  a 
trap-drum  amid  the  ruins  of  some  American 
college,  will  account  them  nobler  instruments 
than  the  lyre  and  lute. 

Evolution  brought  us  down  chattering  from 
the  trees,  and  we  have  no  right  to  assume  that 
we  are  reverting  to  the  arboreal  state.  This 
is  no  time  to  lose  confidence  in  democracy; 
it  is  too  soon  to  chant  the  recessional  of  the 
race.  Much  too  insistently  we  have  sought  to 
reform,  to  improve,  to  plant  the  seeds  of  cul 
ture,  to  create  moral  perfection  by  act  of 
Congress.  If  Main  Street  knows  what  America 
is  all  about,  and  bathes  itself  and  is  kind  and 
considerate  of  its  neighbors,  why  not  leave  the 
rest  on  the  knees  of  the  gods  ? 

What  really  matters  as  to  Main  Street  is 

[24] 


LET  MAIN  STREET  ALONE! 

that  it  shall  be  happy.  We  can't,  merely  by 
taking  thought,  lift  its  people  to  higher  levels 
of  aspiration.  Main  Street  is  neither  blind  nor 
deaf;  it  knows  well  enough  what  is  going  on 
in  the  world;  it  is  not  to  be  jostled  or  pushed 
by  condescending  outsiders  eager  to  bestow 
sweetness  and  light  upon  it.  It  is  not  unaware 
of  the  desirability  of  such  things;  and  in  its 
own  fashion  and  at  the  proper  time  it  will  go 
after  them.  Meanwhile  if  it  is  cheerful  and 
hopeful  and  continues  to  vote  with  reasonable 
sanity  the  rest  of  the  world  needn't  despair  of 
it.  After  all,  it's  only  the  remnant  of  Israel 
that  can  be  saved.  Let  Main  Street  alone! 


[25] 


JAMES  WHITCOMB   RILEY 

I 

ON  a  day  in  July,  1916,  thirty-five  thou 
sand  people  passed  under  the  dome  of 
the  Indiana  capitol  to  look  for  the  last 
time  upon  the  face  of  James  Whitcomb  Riley. 
The  best-loved  citizen  of  the  Hoosier  common 
wealth  was  dead,  and  laborers  and  mechanics 
in  their  working  clothes,  professional  and  busi 
ness  men,  women  in  great  numbers,  and  a  host 
of  children  paid  their  tribute  of  respect  to  one 
whose  sole  claim  upon  their  interest  lay  in  his 
power  to  voice  their  feelings  of  happiness  and 
grief  in  terms  within  the  common  understand 
ing.  The  very  general  expressions  of  sorrow 
and  affection  evoked  by  the  announcement 
of  the  poet's  death  encourage  the  belief  that 
the  lines  that  formed  on  the  capitol  steps  might 
have  been  augmented  endlessly  by  additions 
drawn  from  every  part  of  America.  I  frankly 
confess  that,  having  enjoyed  his  friendship 
through  many  years,  I  am  disqualified  from 


JAMES   WHIT  COMB  RILEY 


passing  judgment  upon  his  writings,  into  much 
of  which  I  inevitably  read  a  significance  that 
may  not  be  apparent  to  those  capable  of  ap 
praising  them  with  critical  detachment.  But 
Riley's  personality  was  quite  as  interesting  as 
his  work,  and  I  shall  attempt  to  give  some 
hint  of  the  man  as  I  knew  him,  with  special 
reference  to  his  whims  and  oddities. 

My  acquaintance  with  him  dates  from  a 
memorable  morning  when  he  called  on  me  in 
a  law  office  where  I  copied  legal  documents, 
ran  errands,  and  scribbled  verses.  At  this  time 
he  was  a  regular  contributor  to  the  Sunday 
edition  of  the  Indianapolis  Journal — a  news 
paper  of  unusual  literary  quality,  most  hos 
pitable  to  fledgling  bards,  who  were  permitted 
to  shine  in  the  reflected  light  of  Riley's  grow 
ing  fame.  Some  verses  of  mine  having  been 
copied  by  a  Cincinnati  paper,  Riley  asked  about 
me  at  the  Journal  office  and  sought  me  out, 
paper  in  hand,  to  speak  a  word  of  encourage-" 
ment.  He  was  the  most  interesting,  as  he  was 
the  most  amusing  and  the  most  lovable  man 
I  have  known.  No  one  was  quite  like  Riley, 
and  the  ways  in  which  he  suggests  other  men 

[27] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

merely  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  he  was, 
after  all,  wholly  different :  he  was  Riley ! 

He  was  the  best-known  figure  in  our  capital; 
this  was  true,  indeed,  of  the  entire  common 
wealth  that  he  sang  into  fame.  He  was  below 
medium  height,  neatly  and  compactly  built;  fair 
and  of  ruddy  complexion.  He  had  been  a  tow- 
headed  boy,  and  while  his  hair  thinned  in  later 
years,  any  white  that  crept  into  it  was  scarcely 
perceptible.  A  broad  flexible  mouth  and  a  big 
nose  were  the  distinguishing  features  of  a  re 
markably  mobile  face.  He  was  very  near-sight 
ed,  and  the  rubber-rimmed  glasses  he  invariably 
wore  served  to  obscure  his  noticeably  large  blue 
eyes.  He  was  a  compound  of  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  and  Irish,  but  the  Celt  in  him  was  dom 
inant:  there  were  fairies  in  his  blood. 

In  his  days  of  health  he  carried  himself  alertly 
and  gave  an  impression  of  smartness.  He  was 
in  all  ways  neat  and  orderly;  there  was  no 
slouch  about  him  and  no  Byronic  affectations. 
He  was  always  curious  as  to  the  origin  of  any 
garment  or  piece  of  haberdashery  displayed 
by  his  intimates,  but  strangely  secretive  as  to 
the  source  of  his  own  supplies.  He  affected 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


obscure  tailors,  probably  because  they  were 
likelier  to  pay  heed  to  his  idiosyncrasies  than 
more  fashionable  ones.  He  once  deplored  to  me 
the  lack  of  attention  bestowed  upon  the  waist 
coat  by  sartorial  artists.  This  was  a  garment 
he  held  of  the  highest  importance  in  man's 
adornment.  Hopkinson  Smith,  he  averred,  was 
the  only  man  he  had  ever  seen  who  displayed 
a  satisfactory  taste  and  was  capable  of  realiz 
ing  the  finest  effects  in  this  particular. 

He  inspired  affection  by  reason  of  his  gentle 
ness  and  inherent  kindliness  and  sweetness. 
The  idea  that  he  was  a  convivial  person,  de 
lighting  in  boon  companions  and  prolonged 
sessions  at  table,  has  no  basis  in  fact.  He  was 
a  domestic,  even  a  cloistral  being;  he_  disliked 
noise  and  large  companies;  he  hated  familiar 
ity,  and  would  quote  approvingly  what  Lowell 
said  somewhere  about  the  annoyance  of  being 
clapped  on  the  back.  Riley's  best  friends  never 
laid  hands  on  him;  I  have  seen  strangers  or 
new  acquaintances  do  so  to  their  discom 
fiture. 

No  background  of  poverty  or  early  hard 
ship  can  be  provided  for  this  "poet  of  the 

[29] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

people."  His  father  was  a  lawyer,  an  orator 
well  known  in  central  Indiana,  and  Riley's 
boyhood  was  spent  in  comfortable  circum 
stances.  The  curtailment  of  his  schooling  was 
not  enforced  by  necessity,  but  was  due  to  his 
impatience  of  restraint  and  inability  to  ad 
just  his  own  interests  to  the  prevailing  cur 
riculum.  He  spent  some  time  in  his  father's 
office  at  Greenfield,  reading  general  literature, 
not  law,  and  experimenting  with  verse.  He 
served  an  apprenticeship  as  a  house  painter, 
and  acquired  the  art  of  "marbling "  and  "grain 
ing" — long-abandoned  embellishments  of  do 
mestic  architecture.  Then,  with  four  other 
young  men,  he  began  touring  Indiana,  painting 
signs,  and,  from  all  accounts,  adding  greatly  to 
the  gaiety  of  life  in  the  communities  visited.  To 
advertise  their  presence,  Riley  would  recite 
in  the  market-place,  or  join  with  his  comrades 
in  giving  musical  entertainments.  Or,  pretend 
ing  to  be  blind,  he  would  laboriously  climb 
up  on  a  scaffolding  and  before  the  amazed 
spectators  execute  a  sign  in  his  best  style.  There 
was  a  time  when  he  seemed  anxious  to  forget 
his  early  experiences  as  a  wandering  sign- 

[30] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


painter  and  entertainer  with  a  patent-medicine 
van,  but  in  his  last  years  he  spoke  of  them 
quite  frankly. 

He  had  a  natural  talent  for  drawing;  in  fact, 
in  his  younger  days  he  dabbled  in  most  of 
the  arts.  He  discoursed  to  me  at  length  on  one 
occasion  of  musical  instruments,  about  all  of 
which  he  seemed  to  have  much  curious  lore. 
He  had  been  able  to  play  more  or  less  success 
fully  upon  the  violin,  the  banjo,  the  guitar,  and 
(his  humor  bubbling)  the""snare  and  bass  drum ! 
"There's  nothing,"  he  said,  "so  much  fun  as 
thumping  a  bass  drum,"  an  instrument  on 
which  he  had  performed  in  the  Greenfield  band. 
"To  throw  your  legs  over  the  tail  of  a  band 
wagon  and  thump  away — there's  nothing  like 
it!"  As  usual  when  the  reminiscent  mood  was 
upon  him,  he  broadened  the  field  of  the  dis 
cussion  to  include  strange  characters  he  had 
known  among  rural  musicians,  and  these  were 
of  endless  variety.  He  had  known  a  man  who 
was  passionately  fond  of  the  bass-drum  and 
who  played  solos  upon  it — "Sacred  music"! 
Sometimes  the  neighbors  would  borrow  the 
drum,  and  he  pictured  the  man's  chagrin  when 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

after  a  hard  day's  work  he  went   home  and 
found  his  favorite  instrument  gone. 

Riley  acquired  various  mechanical  devices 
for  creating  music  and  devoted  himself  to  them 
with  childish  delight.  In  one  of  his  gay  moods 
he  would  instruct  a  visitor  in  the  art  of  pump 
ing  his  player-piano,  and,  having  inserted  a 
favorite  "roll,"  would  dance  about  the  room 
snapping  his  fingers  in  time  to  the  music. 

II 

Riley's  reading  was  marked  by  the  casual- 
ness  that  was  part  of  his  nature.  He  liked  small 
books  that  fitted  comfortably  into  the  hand, 
and  he  brought  to  the  mere  opening  of  a  volume 
and  the  cutting  of  leaves  a  deliberation  elo 
quent  of  all  respect  for  the  contents.  Always  a 
man  of  surprises,  in  nothing  was  he  more  sur 
prising  than  in  the  wide  range  of  his  reading. 
It  was  never  safe  to  assume  that  he  was  unac 
quainted  with  some  book  which  might  appear 
to  be  foreign  to  his  tastes.  His  literary  judg 
ments  were  sound,  though  his  prejudices  (al 
ways  amusing  and  frequently  unaccountable) 
occasionally  led  him  astray. 

[32] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 

While  his  study  of  literature  had  followed 
the  haphazard  course  inevitable  in  one  so  un 
influenced  by  formal  schooling,  it  may  fairly 
be  said  that  he  knew  all  that  it  was  important 
for  him  to  know  of  books.  He  was  of  those 
for  whom  life  and  letters  are  of  one  piece  and 
inseparable.  In  a  broad  sense  he  was  a  hu 
manist.  What  he  missed  in  literature  he  ac 
quired  from  life.  Shakespeare  he  had  absorbed 
early;  Herrick,  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  Long 
fellow  were  deep-planted  in  his  memory.  His 
excursions  into  history  had  been  the  slightest; 
biographies  and  essays  interested  him  much 
more,  and  he  was  constantly  on  the  lookout 
for  new  poets.  No  new  volume  of  verse,  no 
striking  poem  in  a  periodical  escaped  his  watch 
ful  eye. 

He  professed  to  believe  that  Mrs.  Browning 
was  a  poet  greatly  superior  to  her  husband. 
Nevertheless  he  had  read  Robert  Browning 
with  some  attention,  for  on  one  or  two  occa 
sions  he  burlesqued  successfully  that  poet's 
mannerisms.  For  some  reason  he  manifested 
a  marked  antipathy  to  Poe.  And  in  this  con 
nection  it  may  be  of  interest  to  mention  that 

[33] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

he  was  born  (October  7,  1849)  the  day  Poe 
died !  But  for  Riley's  cordial  dislike  of  Poe  I 
might  be  tempted  to  speculate  upon  this  coin 
cidence  as  suggesting  a  relinquishment  of  the 
singing  robes  by  one  poet  in  favor  of  another. 
Riley  had,  undoubtedly,  at  some  time  felt 
Poe's  spell,  for  there  are  unmistakable  traces 
of  Poe's  influence  in  some  of  his  earlier  work. 
Indeed,  his  first  wide  advertisement  came 
through  an  imitation  of  Poe — a  poem  called 
"Leonanie" — palmed  off  as  having  been  found 
written  in  an  old  schoolbook  that  had  been 
Poe's  property.  Riley  long  resented  any  refer 
ence  to  this  hoax,  though  it  was  a  harmless 
enough  prank — the  device  of  a  newspaper 
friend  to  prove  that  public  neglect  of  Riley 
was  not  based  upon  any  lack  of  merit  in  his 
writings.  It  was  probably  Poe's  sombreness 
that  Riley  did  not  like,  or  possibly  his  per 
sonal  characteristics.  Still,  he  would  close  any 
discussion  of  Poe's  merits  as  a  writer  by  de 
claring  that  "The  Raven"  was  clearly  inspired 
by  Mrs.  Browning's  "Lady  Geraldine's  Court 
ship."  This  is  hardly  susceptible  of  proof,  and 
Elizabeth  Barrett's  gracious  acceptance  of  the 

[34] 


JAMES   WE  IT  COMB  RILEY 


compliment  of  Poe's  dedication  of  his  volume 
containing  "The  Raven"  may  or  may  not 
be  conclusive  as  to  her  own  judgment  in  the 
matter. 

Whitman  had  no  attraction  for  Riley;  he 
thought  him  something  of  a  charlatan.  He 
greatly  admired  Stevenson  and  kept  near  at 
hand  a  rare  photograph  of  the  Scot  which 
Mrs.  Stevenson  had  given  him.  He  had  recog 
nized  Kipling's  genius  early,  and  his  meeting 
with  that  writer  in  New  York  many  years 
ago  was  one  of  the  pleasantest  and  most  satis 
factory  of  all  his  literary  encounters. 

The  contentions  between  Realism  and  Ro 
manticism  that  occasionally  enliven  our  period 
ical  literature  never  roused  his  interest;  his 
sympathies  were  with  the  conservatives  and  he 
preferred  gardens  that  contained  familiar  and 
firmly  planted  literary  landmarks.  He  knew 
his  Dickens  thoroughly,  and  his  lifelong  at 
tention  to  "character"  was  due  no  doubt  in 
some  measure  to  his  study  of  Dickens's  por 
traits  of  the  quaint  and  humorous.  He  always 
confessed  gratefully  his  indebtedness  to  Long 
fellow,  and  once,  when  we  were  speaking  of 

[35] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

the  older  poet,  he  remarked  that  Mark  Twain 
and  Bret  Harte  were  other  writers  to  whom 
he  owed  much.  Harte's  obligations  to  both 
Dickens  and  Longfellow  are,  of  course,  obvious 
and  Harte's  use  of  dialect  in  verse  probably 
strengthened  Riley's  confidence  in  the  Hoosier 
speech  as  a  medium  when  he  began  to  find 
himself. 

His  humor — both  as  expressed  in  his  writ 
ings,  and  as  we  knew  it  who  lived  neighbor  to 
him — was  of  the  same  genre  as  Mark  Twain's. 
And  it  is  not  surprising  that  Mark  Twain  and 
Riley  should  have  met  on  grounds  of  common 
sympathy  and  understanding.  What  the  Missis 
sippi  was  to  the  Missourian,  the  Old  National 
Road  that  bisected  Greenfield  was  to  Riley. 
The  larger  adventure  of  life  that  made  Clemens 
a  cosmopolitan  did  not  appeal  to  Riley,  with 
his  intense  loyalty  to  the  State  of  his  birth 
and  the  city  that  for  thirty-eight  years  was 
his  home. 

It  gave  him  the  greatest  pleasure  to  send  his 
friends  books  that  he  thought  would  interest 
them.  Among  those  he  sent  me  are  Professor 
Woodberry's  selections  from  Aubrey  de  Vere, 

[36] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


whose  "Bard  Ethell"  Riley  thought  a  fine  per 
formance;  Bradford  Torrey's  Friends  on  the 
Shelf  and,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  a  copy 
of  G.  K.  Chesterton's  poems  in  which  he  had 
written  a  substitute  for  one  of  the  lines.  If  in 
these  gifts  he  chose  some  volume  already  known 
to  the  recipient,  it  was  well  to  conceal  the  fact, 
for  it  was  essential  to  the  perfect  course  of  his 
friendships  that  he  be  taken  on  his  own  terms, 
and  no  one  would  have  had  the  heart  to  spoil 
his  pleasure  in  a  "discovery/* 

He  was  most  generous  toward  all  aspirants 
in  his  own  field,  though  for  years  these  were 
prone  to  take  advantage  of  his  good  nature  by 
inflicting  books  and  manuscripts  upon  him. 
I  once  committed  the  indiscretion  of  uttering 
a  volume  of  verse,  and  observed  with  trepida 
tion  a  considerable  number  of  copies  on  the 
counter  of  the  bookstore  where  we  did  much 
loafing  together.  A  few  days  later  I  was  sur 
prised  and  for  a  moment  highly  edified  to  find 
the  stock  greatly  depleted.  On  cautious  inquiry 
I  found  that  it  was  Riley  alone  who  had  been 
the  investor — to  the  extent  of  seventy-five 
copies,  which  he  distributed  widely  among 

[37] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

literary  acquaintances.  In  the  case  of  another 
friend  who  published  a  book  without  large  ex 
pectations  of  public  favor,  Riley  secretly  pur 
chased  a  hundred  and  scattered  them  broad 
cast.  These  instances  are  typical:  he  would  do 
a  kind  thing  furtively  and  evince  the  deepest 
embarrassment  when  detected. 

It  is  always  a  matter  for  speculation  as  to 
just  what  effect  a  college  training  would  have 
upon  men  of  Riley's  type,  who,  missing  the 
inscribed  portals,  nevertheless  find  their  way 
into  the  house  of  literature.  I  give  my  opinion 
for  what  it  may  be  worth,  that  he  would  have 
been  injured  rather  than  benefited  by  an  ampler 
education.  He  was  chiefly  concerned  with  hu 
man  nature,  and  it  was  his  fortune  to  know 
profoundly  those  definite  phases  and  contrasts 
of  life  that  were  susceptible  of  interpretation 
in  the  art  of  which  he  was  sufficiently  the 
master.  Of  the  general  trend  of  society  and 
social  movements  he  was  as  unconscious  as 
though  he  lived  on  another  planet.  I  am 
disposed  to  think  that  he  profited  by  his  igno 
rance  of  such  things,  which  left  him  to  the 
peaceful  contemplation  of  the  simple  phe- 

[38] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB   RILEY 


nomena  of  life  that  had  early  attracted  him. 
Nothing  seriously  disturbed  his  inveterate  pro 
vincial  habit  of  thought.  He  manifested  Tho- 
reau's  indifference — without  the  Yankee's  scorn 
— for  the  world  beyond  his  dooryard.  "I  can 
see,"  he  once  wrote  me,  "when  you  talk  of 
your  return  and  the  prospective  housewarm- 
ing  of  the  new  home,  that  your  family's 
united  heart  is  right  here  in  old  Indianapolis — 
high  Heaven's  sole  and  only  understudy." 
And  this  represented  his  very  sincere  feeling 
about  "our"  town;  no  other  was  comparable 
to  it! 

Ill 

He  did  his  writing  at  night,  a  fact  which 
accounted  for  the  spacious  leisure  in  which 
his  days  were  enveloped.  He  usually  had  a 
poem  pretty  thoroughly  fixed  in  his  mind  be 
fore  he  sought  paper,  but  the  actual  writing 
was  often  a  laborious  process;  and  it  was  his 
habit,  while  a  poem  was  in  preparation,  to 
carry  the  manuscript  in  his  pocket  for  con 
venience  of  reference.  The  elisions  required  by 
dialect  and  his  own  notions  of  punctuation — 

[39] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

here  he  was  a  law  unto  himself — brought  him 
into  frequent  collision  with  the  lords  of  the 
proof  desk;  but  no  one,  I  think,  ever  success 
fully  debated  with  him  any  point  of  folk  speech. 
I  once  ventured  to  suggest  that  his  use  of  the 
phrase  "durin*  the  army,"  as  a  rustic  veteran's 
way  of  referring  to  the  Civil  War,  was  not 
general,  but  probably  peculiar  to  the  individual 
he  had  heard  use  it.  He  stoutly  defended  his 
phrase  and  was  ready  at  once  with  witnesses 
in  support  of  it  as  a  familiar  usage  of  Indiana 
veterans. 

In  the  matter  of  our  Hoosier  folk  speech 
he  was  an  authority,  though  the  subject  did 
not  interest  him  comparatively  or  scientifically. 
He  complained  to  me  bitterly  of  an  editor  who 
had  directed  his  attention  to  apparent  incon 
sistencies  of  dialect  in  the  proof  of  a  poem. 
Riley  held,  and  rightly,  that  the  dialect  of  the 
Hoosier  is  not  fixed  and  unalterable,  but  varies 
in  certain  cases,  and  that  words  are  often  pro 
nounced  differently  in  the  same  sentence.  Eg- 
gleston's  Hoosier  is  an  earlier  type  than  Riley's, 
belonging  to  the  dark  years  when  our  illiteracy 
staggered  into  high  percentages.  And  Eggleston 

[40] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


wrote  of  southern  Indiana,  where  the  "poor 
white"  strain  of  the  South  had  been  most 
marked.  Riley  not  only  spoke  for  a  later  period, 
but  his  acquaintance  was  with  communities 
that  enjoyed  a  better  social  background;  the 
schoolhouse  and  the  rural  "literary"  were  al 
ways  prominent  in  his  perspective. 

He  had  preserved  his  youth  as  a  place  apart 
and  unalterable,  peopled  with  folk  who  lived 
as  he  had  known  them  in  his  enchanted  boy 
hood.  Scenes  and  characters  of  that  period  he 
was  able  to  revisualize  at  will.  When  his  homing 
fancy  took  wing,  it  was  to  bear  him  back  to 
the  little  town's  dooryards,  set  with  mignonette, 
old-fashioned  roses,  and  borders  of  hollyhocks, 
or  countryward  to  the  streams  that  wound 
their  way  through  fields  of  wheat  and  corn. 
Riley  kept  his  place  at  innumerable  firesides 
in  this  dream  existence,  hearing  the  veterans 
of  the  Civil  War  spin  their  yarns,  or  farmers 
discuss  crop  prospects,  or  the  whispers  of  chil 
dren  awed  by  the  "woo"  of  the  wind  in  the 
chimney.  If  Pan  crossed  his  vision  (he  drew 
little  upon  mythology)  it  was  to  sit  under  a 
sycamore  above  a  "ripple"  in  the  creek  and 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

beat  time  rapturously  with  his  goat  hoof  to 
the  music  of  a  Hoosier  lad's  willow  whistle. 

The  country  lore  that  Riley  had  collected 
and  stored  in  youth  was  inexhaustible;  it  nev 
er  seemed  necessary  for  him  to  replenish  his 
pitcher  at  the  fountains  of  original  inspiration. 
I  have  read  somewhere  a  sketch  of  him  in  which 
he  was  depicted  as  walking  with  Wordsworthian 
calm  through  lonely  fields,  but  nothing  could 
be  more  absurd.  Fondly  as  he  sang  of  green 
fields  and  running  brooks,  he  cultivated  their 
acquaintance  very  little  after  he  established 
his  home  at  Indianapolis.  Lamb  could  not  have 
loved  city  streets  more  than  he.  Much  as  Bret 
Harte  wrote  of  California  after  years  of  ab 
sence,  so  Riley  drew  throughout  his  life  from 
scenes  familiar  to  his  boyhood  and  young  man 
hood,  and  with  undiminished  sympathy  and 
vigor. 

His  knowledge  of  rural  life  was  intimate, 
though  he  knew  the  farm  only  as  a  country- 
town  boy  may  know  it,  through  association 
with  farm  boys  and  holidays  spent  in  visits  to 
country  cousins.  Once  at  the  harvest  season, 
as  we  were  crossing  Indiana  in  a  train,  he  began 

[42] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


discoursing  on  apples.  He  repeated  Bryant's 
poem  "The  Planting  of  the  Apple  Tree,"  as 
a  prelude,  and,  looking  out  over  the  Hoosier 
Hesperides,  began  mentioning  the  varieties  of 
apples  he  had  known  and  commenting  on  their 
qualities.  When  I  expressed  surprise  at  the 
number,  he  said  that  with  a  little  time  he 
thought  he  could  recall  a  hundred  kinds,  and 
he  did  in  fact  name  more  than  fifty  before  we 
were  interrupted. 

The  whimsicalities  and  comicalities  and  the 
heart-breaking  tragedies  of  childhood  he  inter 
preted  with  rare  fidelity.  His  wide  popularity 
as  a  poet  of  childhood  was  due  to  a  special 
genius  for  understanding  the  child  mind.  Yet 
he  was  very  shy  in  the  presence  of  children, 
and  though  he  kept  track  of  the  youngsters  in 
the  houses  of  his  friends,  and  could  establish 
himself  on  good  terms  with  them,  he  seemed 
uncomfortable  when  suddenly  confronted  by 
a  strange  child.  This  was  due  in  some  measure 
to  the  proneness  of  parents  to  exhibit  their 
offspring  that  he  might  hear  them  "recite" 
his  own  poems,  or  in  the  hope  of  eliciting  some 
verses  commemorative  of  Johnny's  or  Mary's 

[43] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

precocity.  His  children  were  country-town  and 
farm  children  whom  he  had  known  and  lived 
among  and  unconsciously  studied  and  appraised 
for  the  use  he  later  made  of  them.  Here,  again, 
he  drew  upon  impressions  fixed  in  his  own  boy 
hood,  and  to  this  gallery  of  types  he  never,  I 
think,  added  materially.  Much  of  his  verse  for 
children  is  autobiographical,  representing  his 
own  attitude  of  mind  as  an  imaginative,  capri 
cious  child.  Some  of  his  best  character  studies 
are  to  be  found  among  his  juvenile  pieces.  In 
"That-Air  Young-Un,"  for  example,  he  enters 
into  the  heart  of  an  abnormal  boy  who 

"Come  home  onc't  and  said  'at  he 
Knowed  what  the  snake-feeders  thought 
When  they  grit  their  wings;   and  knowed 
Turkle-talk,  when  bubbles  riz 
Over  where  the  old  roots  growed 
Where  he  th'owed  them  pets  o'  his — 
Little  turripuns  he  caught 
In  the  County  Ditch  and  packed 
In  his  pockets  days  and  days ! " 

The  only  poem  he  ever  contributed  to  the 
Atlantic  was  "Old  Glory,"  and  I  recall  that 
he  held  it  for  a  considerable  period,  retouching 

[44] 


JAMES   WE  IT  COMB  RILEY 


it,  and  finally  reading  it  at  a  club  dinner  to 
test  it  thoroughly  by  his  own  standards,  which 
were  those  of  the  ear  as  well  as  the  eye.  When 
I  asked  him  why  he  had  not  printed  it  he  said 
he  was  keeping  it  "to  boil  the  dialect  out  of 
it."  On  the  other  hand,  "The  Poet  of  the  Fu 
ture,"  one  of  his  best  pieces,  was  produced  in 
an  evening.  He  was  little  given  to  displaying 
his  poems  in  advance  of  publication,  and  this 
was  one  of  the  few  that  he  ever  showed  me  in 
manuscript.  It  had  been  a  real  inspiration; 
the  writing  of  it  had  given  him  the  keenest 
pleasure,  and  the  glow  of  success  was  still  upon 
him  when  we  met  the  following  morning.  He 
wrote  much  occasional  and  personal  verse 
which  added  nothing  to  his  reputation — a  fact 
of  which  he  was  perfectly  aware — and  there 
is  a  wide  disparity  between  his  best  and  his 
poorest.  He  wrote  prose  with  difficulty;  he 
said  he  could  write  a  column  of  verse  much 
more  quickly  than  he  could  produce  a  like 
amount  of  prose. 

His  manuscripts  and  letters  were  works  of 
art,  so  careful  was  he  of  his  handwriting — a 
small,  clear  script  as  legible  as  engraving,  and 

[45] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

with  quaint  effects  of  capitalization.  In  his 
younger  days  he  indulged  in  a  large  correspon 
dence,  chiefly  with  other  writers.  His  letters 
were  marked  by  the  good-will  and  cordiality, 
the  racy  humor  and  the  self-mockery  of  his 
familiar  talk.  "Your  reference" — this  is  a  typi 
cal  beginning  — "to  your  vernal  surroundings 
and  cloistered  seclusion  from  the  world  stress 
and  tumult  of  the  fevered  town  comes  to  me 
in  veriest  truth 

"  'With  a  Sabbath  sound  as  of  doves 
In  quiet  neighborhoods,'  " 

as  that  grand  poet  Oliver  W.  Longfellow  so 
tersely  puts  it  in  his  inimitable  way."  He  ad 
dressed  his  correspondents  by  names  specially 
designed  for  them,  and  would  sign  himself  by 
any  one  of  a  dozen  droll  pseudonyms. 

IV 

Riley's  talent  as  a  reader  (he  disliked  the 
term  recitationist)  was  hardly  second  to  his 
creative  genius.  As  an  actor — in  such  parts, 
for  example,  as  those  made  familiar  by  JefFer- 

[46] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


son — he  could  not  have  failed  to  win  high  rank. 
His  art,  apparently  the  simplest,  was  the  re 
sult  of  the  most  careful  study  and  experiment; 
facial  play,  gesture,  shadings  of  the  voice,  all 
contributed  to  the  completeness  of  his  por 
trayals.  So  vivid  were  his  impersonations  and 
so  readily  did  he  communicate  the  sense  of 
atmosphere,  that  one  seemed  to  be  witnessing 
a  series  of  dramas  with  a  well-set  stage  and  a 
diversity  of  players.  He  possessed  in  a  large 
degree  the  magnetism  that  is  the  birthright 
of  great  actors;  there  was  something  very 
appealing  and  winning  in  his  slight  figure  as 
he  came  upon  the  platform.  His  diffidence 
(partly  assumed  and  partly  sincere)  at  the 
welcoming  applause,  the  first  sound  of  his  voice 
as  he  tested  it  with  the  few  introductory  sen 
tences  he  never  omitted — these  spoken  halt 
ingly  as  he  removed  and  disposed  of  his  glasses 
— all  tended  to  pique  curiosity  and  win  the 
house  to  the  tranquillity  his  delicate  art  de 
manded.  He  said  that  it  was  possible  to  offend 
an  audience  by  too  great  an  appearance  of 
cock-sureness;  a  speaker  did  well  to  manifest 
a  certain  timidity  when  he  walked  upon  the 

[47] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 


stage,  and  he  deprecated  the  manner  of  a  cer 
tain  lecturer  and  reader,  who  always  began  by 
chaffing  his  hearers.  [Riley's  programmes  con 
sisted  of  poems  of  sentiment  and  pathos,  such 
as  "Good-bye,  Jim"  and  "Out  to  Old  Aunt 
Mary's,"  varied  with  humorous  stories  in  prose 
or  verse  which  he  told  with  inimitable  skill 
and  without  a  trace  of  buffoonery.  Mark  Twain 
wrote,  in  "How  to  Tell  a  Story,"  that  the 
wounded-soldier  anecdote  which  Riley  told 
for  years  was,  as  Riley  gave  it,  the  funniest 
thing  he  ever  listened  to. 

In  his  travels  Riley  usually  appeared  with 
another  reader.  Richard  Malcolm  Johnston, 
Eugene  Field,  and  Robert  J.  Burdette  were  at 
various  times  associated  with  him,  but  he  is 
probably  more  generally  known  for  his  joint 
appearances  with  the  late  Edgar  W.  ("Bill") 
Nye.  He  had  for  Nye  the  warmest  affection, 
and  in  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life  would  re 
count  with  the  greatest  zest  incidents  of  their 
adventures  on  the  road — Nye's  practical  jokes, 
his  droll  comments  upon  the  people  they  met, 
the  discomforts  of  transportation,  and  the  hor 
rors  of  hotel  cookery.  Riley's  admiration  for  his 

[48] 


JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


old  comrade  was  so  great  that  I  sometimes  sus 
pected  that  he  attributed  to  Nye  the  author 
ship  of  some  of  his  own  stories  in  sheer  excess 
of  devotion  to  Nye's  memory. 

His  first  reception  into  the  inner  literary 
circle  was  in  1887,  when  he  participated  in 
the  authors'  readings  given  in  New  York  to 
further  the  propaganda  of  the  Copyright 
League.  Lowell  presided  on  these  occasions, 
and  others  who  contributed  to  the  exercises 
were  Mark  Twain,  George  W.  Cable,  Richard 
Henry  Stoddard,  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  Henry 
C.  Bunner,  George  William  Curtis,  Charles 
Dudley  Warner,  and  Frank  R.  Stockton.  It 
was,  I  believe,  Mr.  Robert  Underwood  John 
son,  then  of  the  Century  Magazine  (which  had 
just  enlisted  Riley  as  a  contributor),  who  was 
responsible  for  this  recognition  of  the  Hoosier. 
Nothing  did  more  to  establish  Riley  as  a  serious 
contestant  for  literary  honors  than  his  success 
on  this  occasion.  He  was  greeted  so  cordially — 
from  contemporaneous  accounts  he  "ran  away 
with  the  show  " — that  on  Lowell's  urgent  invi 
tation  he  appeared  at  a  second  reading. 

Riley 's  intimate  friendships  with  other  writ- 

[49] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

ers  were  comparatively  few,  due  largely  to 
his  home-keeping  habit,  but  there  were  some 
for  whom,  without  ever  seeing  much  of  them, 
he  had  a  liking  that  approached  affection. 
Mark  Twain  was  one  of  these;  Mr.  Howells 
and  Joel  Chandler  Harris  were  others.  He  saw 
Longfellow  on  the  occasion  of  his  first  visit 
to  Boston.  Riley  had  sent  him  several  of  his 
poems,  which  Longfellow  had  acknowledged 
in  an  encouraging  letter;  but  it  was  not  the 
way  of  Riley  to  knock  at  any  strange  door, 
and  General  "Dan"  Macaulay,  once  mayor 
of  Indianapolis,  a  confident  believer  in  the  young 
Hoosier's  future,  took  charge  of  the  pilgrimage. 
Longfellow  had  been  ill,  but  he  appeared  unex 
pectedly  just  as  a  servant  was  turning  the  visi 
tors  away.  He  was  wholly  kind  and  gracious, 
and  "shook  hands  five  times,"  Riley  said,  when 
they  parted.  The  slightest  details  of  that  call 
— it  was  shortly  before  Longfellow's  death — 
were  ineffaceably  written  in  Riley 's  memory 
— even  the  lavender  trousers  which,  he  in 
sisted,  Longfellow  wore ! 

Save  for  the  years  of  lyceum  work  and  the 
last  three  winters  of  his  life  spent  happily  in 

[50] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


Florida,  Riley's  absences  from  home  were 
remarkably  infrequent.  He  derived  no  pleas 
ure  from  the  hurried  travelling  made  neces 
sary  by  his  long  tours  as  a  reader;  he  was 
without  the  knack  of  amusing  himself  in  strange 
places,  and  the  social  exactions  of  such  journeys 
he  found  very  irksome.  Even  in  his  active  years, 
before  paralysis  crippled  him,  his  range  of  ac 
tivities  was  most  circumscribed.  The  Lockerbie 
Street  in  which  he  lived  so  comfortably,  tucked 
away  though  it  is  from  the  noisier  currents  of 
traffic,  lies,  nevertheless,  within  sound  of  the 
court-house  bell,  and  he  followed  for  years  a 
strict  routine  which  he  varied  rarely  and  only 
with  the  greatest  apprehension  as  to  the  pos 
sible  consequences. 

It  was  a  mark  of  our  highest  consideration 
and  esteem  to  produce  Riley  at  entertainments 
given  in  honor  of  distinguished  visitors,  but  this 
was  never  effected  without  considerable  plot 
ting.  (I  have  heard  that  in  Atlanta  "Uncle 
Remus"  was  even  a  greater  problem  to  his 
fellow  citizens !)  Riley's  innate  modesty,  al 
ways  to  be  reckoned  with,  was  likely  to  smother 
his  companionableness  in  the  presence  of  ultra- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

literary  personages.  His  respect  for  scholarship, 
for  literary  sophistication,  made  him  reluctant 
to  meet  those  who,  he  imagined,  breathed  a 
divine  ether  to  which  he  was  unacclimated.  At 
a  small  dinner  in  honor  of  Henry  James  he 
maintained  a  strict  silence  until  one  of  the  other 
guests,  in  an  effort  to  "draw  out"  the  novelist, 
spoke  of  Thomas  Hardy  and  the  felicity  of  his 
titles,  mentioning  Under  the  Greenwood  Tree 
and  A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes.  Riley,  for  the  first 
time  addressing  the  table,  remarked  quietly  of 
the  second  of  these,  "It's  an  odd  thing  about 
eyes,  that  they  usually  come  in  sets !" — a  com 
ment  which  did  not,  as  I  remember,  strike 
Mr.  James  as  being  funny. 

Riley  always  seemed  a  little  bewildered  by 
his  success,  and  it  was  far  from  his  nature  to 
trade  upon  it.  He  was  at  pains  to  escape  from 
any  company  where  he  found  himself  the  centre 
of  attraction.  He  resented  being  "shown  off" 
(to  use  his  own  phrase)  like  "a  white  mouse 
with  pink  eyes."  He  cited  as  proof  that  he 
was  never  intended  for  a  social  career  the  un 
happy  frustration  of  his  attempt  to  escort  his 
first  sweetheart  to  a  party.  Dressed  with  the 


JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


greatest   care,    he    knocked    at   the    beloved's 
door.  Her  father  eyed  him  critically  and  de 
manded:  "What  you  want,  Jimmy?" 
"Come  to  take  Bessie  to  the  party." 
"Humph!   Bessie   ain't  goin'  to  no  party; 
Bessie's  got  the  measles!" 


In  so  far  as  Riley  was  a  critic  of  life  and  con 
duct,  humor  was  his  readiest  means  of  expres 
sion.  Whimsical  turns  of  speech  colored  his 
familiar  talk,  and  he  could  so  utter  a  single 
word — always  with  quiet  inadvertence — as  to 
create  a  roar  of  laughter.  Apart  from  the  com 
moner  type  of  anecdotal  humor,  he  was  most 
amusing  in  his  pursuit  of  fancies  of  the  Stock- 
tonesque  order.  I  imagine  that  he  and  John 
Holmes  of  Old  Cambridge  would  have  under 
stood  each  other  perfectly;  all  the  Holmes 
stories  I  ever  heard — particularly  the  one  about 
Methuselah  and  the  shoe-laces,  preserved  by 
Colonel  Higginson — are  very  similar  to  yarns 
invented  by  Riley. 

To  catch  his  eye  in  a  company  or  at  a  public 

[53] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

gathering  was  always  dangerous,  for  if  he  was 
bored  or  some  tedious  matter  was  forward, 
he  would  seek  relief  by  appealing  to  a  friend 
with  a  slight  lifting  of  the  brows,  or  a  tele 
pathic  reference  to  some  similar  situation  in 
the  past.  As  he  walked  the  streets  with  a  com 
panion  his  comments  upon  people  and  trifling 
incidents  of  street  traffic  were  often  in  his  best 
humorous  vein.  With  his  intimates  he  had  a 
fashion  of  taking  up  without  prelude  subjects 
that  had  been  dropped  weeks  before.  He  was 
greatly  given  to  assuming  characters  and  as 
signing  parts  to  his  friends  in  the  little  come 
dies  he  was  always  creating.  For  years  his  favor 
ite  role  was  that  of  a  rural  preacher  of  a  type 
that  had  doubtless  aroused  his  animosity  in 
youth.  He  built  up  a  real  impression  of  this 
character — a  cadaverous  person  of  Gargantuan 
appetite,  clad  in  a  long  black  alpaca  coat,  who 
arrived  at  farmhouses  at  meal-times  and  de 
pleted  the  larder,  while  the  children  of  the 
household,  awaiting  the  second  table  in  trep 
idation,  gloomily  viewed  the  havoc  through 
the  windows.  One  or  another  of  us  would  be 
Brother  Hotchkiss,  or  Brother  Brookwarble, 

[54] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


and  we  were  expected  to  respond  in  his  own 
key  of  bromidic  pietism.  This  device,  con 
tinually  elaborated,  was  not  wholly  foolishness 
on  his  part,  but  an  expression  of  his  deep-seated 
contempt  for  cant  and  hypocrisy,  which  he  re 
garded  as  the  most  grievous  of  sins. 

When  he  described  some  "character"  he 
had  known,  it  was  with  an  amount  of  minute 
detail  that  made  the  person  stand  forth  as  a 
veritable  being.  Questions  from  the  listener 
would  be  welcomed,  as  evidence  of  sympathy 
with  the  recital  and  interest  in  the  individual 
under  discussion.  As  I  journeyed  homeward 
with  him  once  from  Philadelphia,  he  began 
limning  for  two  companions  a  young  lawyer 
he  had  known  years  before  at  Greenfield.  He 
carried  this  far  into  the  night,  and  at  the  break 
fast  table  was  ready  with  other  anecdotes  of 
this  extraordinary  individual.  When  the  train 
reached  Indianapolis  the  sketch,  vivid  and 
amusing,  seemed  susceptible  of  indefinite  ex 
pansion. 

In  nothing  was  he  more  diverting  than  in  ^  ^ 
the    superstitions    he    affected.    No   life   could 
have   been    freer   from    annoyances    and    care 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

than  his,  and  yet  he  encouraged  the  belief  that 
he  was  pursued  by  a  "hoodoo."  This  was  the 
most  harmless  of  delusions,  and  his  nearest 
friends  encouraged  the  idea  for  the  enjoyment 
they  found  in  his  intense  satisfaction  whenever 
any  untoward  event — never  anything  impor 
tant — actually  befell  him.  The  bizarre,  the 
fantastic,  had  a  mild  fascination  for  him;  he 
read  occult  meanings  into  unusual  incidents 
of  every  kind.  When  Alfred  Tennyson  Dickens 
visited  Indianapolis  I  went  with  him  to  call 
on  Riley.  A  few  days  later  Mr.  Dickens  died 
suddenly  in  New  York,  and  soon  afterward  I 
received  a  note  that  he  had  written  me  in  the 
last  hour  of  his  life.  Riley  was  so  deeply 
impressed  by  this  that  he  was  unable  to  free 
his  mind  of  it  for  several  days.  It  was  an 
astounding  thing,  he  said,  to  receive  a  letter  from 
a  dead  man.  For  a  time  he  found  comfort  in 
the  idea  that  I  shared  the  malevolent  mani 
festations  to  which  he  fancied  himself  subject. 
We  were  talking  in  the  street  one  day  when  a 
brick  fell  from  a  building  and  struck  the  side 
walk  at  our  feet.  He  was  drawing  on  a  glove 
and  quite  characteristically  did  not  start  or 

[56] 


JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


manifest  any  anxiety  as  to  his  safety.  He  lifted 
his  head  guardedly  and  with  a  casual  air  said: 
"I  see  they're  still  after  you"  (referring  to 
the  fact  that  a  few  weeks  earlier  a  sign  had 
fallen  on  me  in  Denver).  Then,  holding  out 
his  hands,  he  added  mournfully:  "They're 
after  me,  too!"  The  gloves — a  pair  brought 
him  from  London  by  a  friend — were  both  lefts. 

A  number  of  years  ago  he  gave  me  his  own 
copy  of  the  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse — an 
anthology  of  which  he  was  very  fond.  In  it 
was  pasted  a  book-plate  that  had  previously 
escaped  me.  It  depicted  an  old  scholar  in  knee- 
breeches  and  three-cornered  hat,  with  an  arm 
ful  of  books.  When  asked  about  the  plate,  Riley 
explained  that  a  friend  had  given  it  to  him, 
but  that  he  had  never  used  it  because,  on  count 
ing  the  books,  there  seemed  to  be  thirteen  of 
them.  However,  some  one  having  convinced 
him  that  the  number  was  really  twelve,  the 
evil  omen  was  happily  dispelled. 

Politics  interested  him  not  at  all,  except  as 
to  the  personal  characteristics  of  men  promi 
nent  in  that  field.  He  voted  only  once,  so  he 
often  told  me,  and  that  was  at  the  behest  of 

tS7l 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

a  friend  who  was  a  candidate  for  some  local 
office.  Finding  later  that  in  his  ignorance  of  the 
proper  manner  of  preparing  a  ballot  he  had  voted 
for  his  friend's  opponent,  he  registered  a  vow,  to 
which  he  held  strictly,  never  to  vote  again.  My 
own  occasional  dabblings  in  politics  caused  him 
real  distress,  and  once,  when  I  had  playfully 
poked  into  a  hornet's  nest,  he  sought  me  out 
immediately  to  warn  me  of  the  dire  consequences 
of  such  temerity.  "They'll  burn  your  barn," 
he  declared;  "they'll  kidnap  your  children!" 

His  incompetence — real  or  pretended — in 
many  directions  was  one  of  the  most  delight 
ful  things  about  him.  Even  in  the  commonest 
transactions  of  life  he  was  rather  helpless — the 
sort  of  person  one  instinctively  assists  and 
protects.  His  deficiencies  of  orientation  were  a 
joke  among  his  friends,  and  though  he  insisted 
that  he  couldn't  find  his  way  anywhere,  I'm 
disposed  to  think  that  this  was  part  of  the 
make-believe  in  which  he  delighted.  When  he 
intrusted  himself  to  another's  leading  he  was 
always  pleased  if  the  guide  proved  as  incapable 
as  himself.  Lockerbie  Street  is  a  little  hard  to 
find,  even  for  lifelong  Indianapolitans,  and  for  a 

[58] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB   RILEY 


caller  to  confess  his  difficulties  in  reaching  it 
was  sure  to  add  to  the  warmth  of  his  welcome. 

Riley  had  no  patience  for  research,  and  cheer 
fully  turned  over  to  friends  his  inquiries  of  every 
sort.  Indeed  he  committed  to  others  with  com 
ical  light-heartedness  all  matters  likely  to  prove 
vexatious  or  disagreeable.  He  was  chronically 
in  search  of  something  that  might  or  might 
not  exist.  He  complained  for  years  of  the  loss 
of  a  trunk  containing  letters  from  Longfellow, 
Mark  Twain,  and  others,  though  his  ideas  as 
to  its  genesis  and  subsequent  history  were 
altogether  hazy. 

He  was  a  past  master  of  the  art  of  postpone 
ment,  but  when  anything  struck  him  as  urgent 
he  found  no  peace  until  he  had  disposed  of  it. 
He  once  summoned  two  friends,  at  what  was 
usually  for  him  a  forbidden  hour  of  the  morning, 
to  repair  forthwith  to  the  photographer's,  that 
the  three  might  have  their  pictures  taken,  his 
excuse  being  that  one  or  another  might  die 
suddenly,  leaving  the  desired  "group"  un 
realized — a  permanent  sorrow  to  the  survivors. 

His  portrait  by  Sargent  shows  him  at  his 
happiest,  but  for  some  reason  he  never  ap- 

[59] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

peared  to  care  for  it  greatly.  There  was,  I  be 
lieve,  some  vague  feeling  on  his  part  that  one 
of  the  hands  was  imperfect — a  little  too 
sketchy,  perhaps.  He  would  speak  cordially 
of  Sargent  and  describe  his  method  of  work 
with  characteristic  attention  to  detail;  but 
when  his  opinion  of  the  portrait  was  solicited, 
he  would  answer  evasively  or  change  the  subject. 
He  clung  tenaciously  to  a  few  haunts,  one  of 
these  being  for  many  years  the  office  of  the 
Journal,  to  which  he  contributed  the  poems  in 
dialect  that  won  his  first  recognition.  The  back 
room  of  the  business  office  was  a  favorite  loafing 
place  for  a  number  of  prominent  citizens  who 
were  responsive  to  Riley's  humor.  They  main 
tained  there  something  akin  to  a  country-store 
forum  of  which  Riley  was  the  bright  particular 
star.  A  notable  figure  of  those  days  in  our  capi 
tal  was  Myron  Reed,  a  Presbyterian  minister 
of  singular  gifts,  who  had  been  a  captain  of 
cavalry  in  the  Civil  War.  Reed  and  William 
P.  Fishback,  a  lawyer  of  distinction,  also  of 
the  company,  were  among  the  first  Americans 
to  "discover"  Matthew  Arnold.  Riley's  only 
excursion  abroad  was  in  company  with  Reed 

[60] 


JAMES   WHITCOMB  RILEY 


and  Fishback,  and  surely  no  more  remarkable 
trio  ever  crossed  the  Atlantic.  It  is  eloquent 
of  the  breadth  of  Riley's  sympathies  that  he 
appreciated  and  enjoyed  the  society  of  men 
whose  interests  and  activities  were  so  wholly 
different  from  his  own.  They  made  the  usual 
pious  pilgrimages,  but  the  one  incident  that 
pleased  Riley  most  was  a  supper  in  the  Beef 
steak  Room  adjoining  Irving's  theatre,  at  which 
Coquelin  also  was  a  guest.  The  theatre  always 
had  a  fascination  for  Riley,  and  this  occasion 
and  the  reception  accorded  his  reading  of  some 
of  his  poems  marked  one  of  the  high  levels  of 
his  career.  Mr.  Fishback  reported  that  Coquelin 
remarked  to  Irving  of  Riley's  recitations,  that 
the  American  had  by  nature  what  they  had 
been  twenty  years  acquiring. 

In  keeping  with  the  diffidence  already  re 
ferred  to  was  his  dread  of  making  awkward 
or  unfortunate  remarks,  and  it  was  like  him 
to  exaggerate  greatly  his  sins  of  this  character. 
He  illustrated  Irving's  fine  nobility  by  an  in 
cident  offered  also  as  an  instance  of  his  own 
habit  of  blundering.  Riley  had  known  for  years 
an  English  comedian  attached  to  a  stock  com- 
[61] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

pany  at  Indianapolis,  and  he  mentioned  this 
actor  to  Irving  and  described  a  bit  of  "  busi 
ness  "  he  employed  in  the  part  of  First  Clown 
in  the  graveyard  scene  in  "Hamlet."  Irving  not 
only  professed  to  remember  the  man,  but  con 
firmed  in  generous  terms  Riley's  estimate  of 
his  performance  as  the  grave-digger.  When 
Riley  learned  later  that  what  he  had  believed 
to  be  the  unique  practice  of  his  friend  had  been 
the  unbroken  usage  of  the  stage  from  the  time 
of  Shakespeare,  he  was  inconsolable,  and  his 
blunder  was  a  sore  point  with  him  to  the  end 
of  his  days. 

Though  his  mail  was  enormous,  he  was  al 
ways  solicitous  that  no  letter  should  escape. 
For  a  time  it  pleased  him  to  receive  mail  at 
three  points  of  delivery — his  house,  his  pub 
lisher's,  and  the  office  of  a  trust  company  where 
a  desk  was  reserved  for  him.  The  advantage  of 
this  was  that  it  helped  to  fill  in  the  day  and 
to  minimize  the  disparity  between  his  own 
preoccupations  and  the  more  exacting  em 
ployments  of  his  friends.  Once  read,  the  letters 
were  likely  to  be  forgotten,  but  this  did  not 
lessen  his  joy  in  receiving  them.  He  was  the 

[62] 


JAMES   WHITCOME   RILEY 


meek  slave  of  autograph-hunters,  and  at  the 
holiday  season  he  might  be  found  daily  inscrib 
ing  books  that  poured  in  remorselessly  from 
every  part  of  the  country. 


VI 

The  cheery  optimism,  tolerance,  and  mercy 
that  are  the  burden  of  his  verse  summed  up 
his  religion.  He  told  me  once  that  he  was  a 
Methodist;  at  least,  he  had  become  a  member 
of  that  body  in  his  youth,  and  he  was  not  aware, 
as  he  put  it,  that  they  had  ever  "fired"  him. 
For  a  time  he  was  deeply  interested  in  Spiritual 
ism  and  attended  seances;  but  I  imagine  that 
he  derived  no  consolation  from  these  sources, 
as  he  never  mentioned  the  subject  in  later 
years.  Though  he  never  probed  far  into  such 
matters,  speculations  as  to  immortality  always 
appealed  to  him,  and  he  often  reiterated  his 
confidence  that  we  shall  meet  and  recognize, 
somewhere  in  the  beyond,  those  who  are  dear 
to  us  on  earth.  His  sympathy  for  bereaved 
friends  was  marked  by  the  tenderest  feeling. 
"It's  all  right,"  he  would  say  bravely,  and  he 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

did  believe,  sincerely,  in  a  benign  Providence 
that  makes  things  "right." 

Here  was  a  life  singularly  blessed  in  all  its 
circumstances  and  in  the  abundant  realiza 
tion  of  its  hopes  and  aims.  Few  poets  of  any 
period  have  received  so  generous  an  expression 
of  public  regard  and  affection  as  fell  to  Riley's 
lot.  The  very  simplicity  of  his  message  and  the 
melodious  forms  in  which  it  was  delivered  won 
him  the  wide  hearing  that  he  enjoyed  and  that 
seems  likely  to  be  his  continuing  reward  far 
into  the  future.  Yale  wrote  him  upon  her  rolls 
as  a  Master  of  Arts,  the  University  of  Pennsyl 
vania  made  him  a  Doctor  of  Letters.  The  Amer 
ican  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters  bestowed 
upon  him  its  gold  medal  in  the  department  of 
poetry;  his  last  birthdays  were  observed  in 
many  parts  of  the  country.  Honor,  love,  obe 
dience,  troops  of  friends  were  his  happy  por 
tion,  and  he  left  the  world  richer  for  the  faith 
and  hope  and  honest  mirth  that  he  brought 
to  it. 


[64] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

"A  good,  honest,  wholesome,  hungry  breakfast." 

— The  Compleat  Angler. 

fine  morning  in  the  full  London 
season,  Major  Arthur  Pendennis  came 
over  from  his  lodgings,  according 'to 
his  custom,  to  breakfast  at  a  certain  club  in 
Pall  Mall,  of  which  he  was  a  chief  ornament." 
This  has  always  seemed  to  me  the  noblest  pos 
sible  opening  for  a  tale.  The  zest  of  a  fine  morn 
ing  in  London,  the  deliberation  of  a  gentleman 
taking  his  ease  in  his  club  and  fortifying  him 
self  against  the  day's  events  with  a  satisfying 
breakfast,  are  communicated  to  the  reader  in 
a  manner  that  at  once  inspires  confidence  and 
arouses  the  liveliest  expectations.  I  shall  not 
go  the  length  of  saying  that  all  novels  should 
begin  with  breakfast,  but  where  the  disclosures 
are  to  be  of  moment,  and  we  are  to  be  urged 
upon  adventures  calculated  to  tax  our  emo 
tions  or  our  staying  powers,  a  breakfast  table 
serves  admirably  as  a  point  of  departure.  We 

1 65] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

thus  begin  the  imaginary  day  where  the  natural 
day  begins,  and  we  form  the  acquaintance  of 
the  characters  at  an  hour  when  human  nature 
is  most  satisfactorily  and  profitably  studied. 

It  is  only  a  superstition  that  night  alone 
affords  the  proper  atmosphere  for  romance, 
and  that  the  curtain  must  fall  upon  the  first 
scene  with  the  dead  face  of  the  king's  mes 
senger  upturned  to  the  moon  and  the  landlord 
bawling  from  an  upper  window  to  know  what 
it's  all  about.  Morning  is  the  beginning  of  all 
things.  Its  hours  breathe  life  and  hope.  "Pis 
tols  and  coffee  !"  The  phrase  whets  the  appetite 
both  for  the  encounter  and  the  cheering  cup. 
The  duel,  to  be  sure,  is  no  longer  in  favor,  and 
it  is  not  for  me  to  lament  its  passing;  but  I 
mention  it  as  an  affair  of  dewy  mornings,  in 
delibly  associated  with  hours  when  the  hand 
is  steady  and  courage  runs  high. 

It  may  be  said  with  all  assurance  that  break 
fast  has  fallen  into  sad  neglect,  due  to  the  haste 
and  rush  of  modern  life — the  commuter's 
anxiety  touching  the  8.27,  the  city  man's  fear 
that  he  may  not  be  able  to  absorb  the  day's 
.news  before  his  car  is  at  the  door.  Breakfast 
[661 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

has  become  a  negligible  item  of  the  day's 
schedule.  An  increasing  number  of  American 
citizens  are  unfit  to  be  seen  at  the  breakfast 
hour;  and  a  man,  woman,  or  child  who  cannot 
present  a  cheery  countenance  at  breakfast  is 
living  an  unhealthy  life  upon  the  brink  of  dis 
aster.  A  hasty  visit  to  the  table,  the  gulping 
of  coffee,  the  vicious  snapping  of  teeth  upon 
food  scarcely  looked  at,  and  a  wild  rush  to 
keep  the  first  appointment  noted  on  the  calen 
dar,  is  the  poorest  possible  preparation  for  a 
day  of  honest  work.  The  man  who  follows 
this  practice  is  a  terror  to  his  business  asso 
ciates.  Reports  that  "the  boss  isn't  feeling  well 
this  morning"  pass  about  the  office,  with  a 
disturbance  of  the  morale  that  does  not  make 
for  the  efficiency  of  the  establishment.  The 
wife  who  reaches  the  table  dishevelled  and 
fretful,  under  compulsion  of  her  conscience, 
with  the  idea  that  the  lord  of  the  house  should 
not  be  permitted  to  fare  forth  without  her 
benediction,  would  do  better  to  keep  her  bed. 
If  the  eggs  are  overdone  or  the  coffee  is  cold 
and  flavorless,  her  panicky  entrance  at  the 
last  moment  will  not  save  the  situation,  A 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

growl  from  behind  the  screening  newspaper  is  a 
poor  return  for  her  wifely  self-denial,  but  she 
deserves  it.  There  is  guilt  upon  her  soul;  if 
she  had  not  insisted  on  taking  the  Smiths  to 
supper  after  the  theatre  the  night  before,  he 
would  have  got  the  amount  of  sleep  essential 
to  his  well-being  and  the  curtaining  paper 
would  not  be  camouflaging  a  face  to  which 
the  good-by  kiss  at  the  front  door  is  an  affront, 
not  a  caress. 

"Have  the  children  come  down  yet?"  the 
lone  breakfaster  growlingly  demands.  The  maid 
replies  indifferently  that  the  children  have 
severally  and  separately  partaken  of  their 
porridge  and  departed.  Her  manner  of  impart 
ing  this  information  signifies  rebellion  against 
a  system  which  makes  necessary  the  repeated 
offering  of  breakfast  to  persons  who  accept 
only  that  they  may  complain  of  it.  No  happier 
is  the  matutinal  meal  in  humbler  establish 
ments  where  the  wife  prepares  and  serves  the 
food,  and  buttons  up  Susie's  clothes  or  sews  a 
button  on  Johnny's  jacket  while  the  kettle 
boils.  If  the  husband  met  a  bootlegger  in  the 
alley  the  previous  night  it  is  the  wife's  dis- 
[68] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

agreeable  duty  to  rouse  him  from  his  pro 
tracted  slumbers;  and  if,  when  she  has  pro 
duced  him  at  the  table,  he  is  displeased  with 
the  menu,  his  resentment,  unchecked  by  those 
restraints  presupposed  of  a  higher  culture,  is 
manifested  in  the  playful  distribution  of  the 
tableware  in  the  general  direction  of  wife  and 
offspring.  The  family  cluster  fearfully  at  the 
door  as  the  head  of  the  house,  with  surly 
resignation,  departs  for  the  scene  of  his  daily 
servitude  with  the  smoke  of  his  pipe  trailing 
behind  him,  animated  by  no  love  for  the  human 
race  but  only  by  a  firm  resolution  not  to  lift 
his  hand  until  the  last  echoes  of  the  whistle 
have  died  away. 

It  is  foreign  to  my  purpose  to  indict  a  whole 
profession,  much  less  the  medical  fraternity, 
which  is  so  sadly  harassed  by  a  generation  of 
Americans  who  demand  in  pills  and  serums 
what  its  progenitors  found  in  the  plough  handle 
and  the  axe,  and  yet  I  cannot  refrain  from  lay 
ing  at  the  doors  of  the  doctors  some  burden  of 
responsibility  for  the  destruction  of  the  break 
fast  table.  The  astute  and  diplomatic  physician, 
perfectly  aware  that  he  is  dealing  with  an  out- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

raged  stomach  and  that  the  internal  discom 
fort  is  due  to  overindulgence,  is  nevertheless 
anxious  to  impose  the  slightest  tax  upon  the 
patient's  self-denial.  Breakfast,  he  reflects,  is 
no  great  shakes  anyhow,  and  he  suggests  that 
it  be  curtailed,  or  prescribes  creamless  coffee 
or  offers  some  other  hint  equally  banal.  This  is 
wholly  satisfactory  to  Jones,  who  says  with  a 
sigh  of  relief  that  he  never  cared  much  for 
breakfast,  and  that  he  can  very  easily  do  with 
out  it. 

About  twenty-five  years  ago  some  one  started 
a  boom  for  the  breakfastless  day  as  conducive  to 
longevity.  I  know  persons  who  have  clung  stub 
bornly  to  this  absurdity.  The  despicable  habit 
contributes  to  domestic  unsociability  and  is,  I  am 
convinced  by  my  own  experiments,  detrimental 
to  health.  The  chief  business  of  the  world  is 
transacted  in  the  morning  hours,  and  I  am 
reluctant  to  believe  that  it  is  most  successfully 
done  on  empty  stomachs.  Fasting  as  a  spiritual 
discipline  is,  of  course,  quite  another  thing; 
but  fasting  by  a  tired  business  man  under 
medical  compulsion  can  hardly  be  lifted  to 
the  plane  of  things  spiritual.  To  delete  break- 

[70] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

fast  from  the  day's  programme  is  sheer  coward 
ice,  a  confession  of  invalidism  which  is  well 
calculated  to  reduce  the  powers  of  resistance. 
The  man  who  begins  the  day  with  a  proscrip 
tion  that  sets  him  apart  from  his  neighbors 
may  venture  into  the  open  jauntily,  persuad 
ing  himself  that  his  abstinence  proves  his  su 
perior  qualities;  but  in  his  heart,  to  say  nothing 
of  his  stomach,  he  knows  that  he  has  been 
guilty  of  a  sneaking  evasion.  If  he  were  a  nor 
mal,  healthy  being,  he  would  not  be  skulking 
out  of  the  house  breakfastless.  Early  rising,  a 
prompt  response  to  the  breakfast-bell,  a  joyous 
breaking  of  the  night's  fast  is  a  rite  not  to  be 
despised  in  civilized  homes. 

Old  age  rises  early  and  calls  for  breakfast 
and  the  day's  news.  Grandfather  is  entitled 
to  his  breakfast  at  any  hour  he  demands  it. 
He  is  at  an  age  when  every  hour  stolen  from 
the  night  is  fairly  plucked  from  oblivion,  and 
to  offer  him  breakfast  in  bed  as  more  convenient 
to  the  household,  or  with  a  well-meant  inten 
tion  of  easing  the  day  for  him,  is  merely  to 
wound  his  feelings.  There  is  something  finely 
appealing  in  the  thought  of  a  veteran  cam- 

[71] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

paigner  in  the  army  of  life  who  doesn't  wait 
for  the  bugle  to  sound  reveille,  but  kindles 
his  fire  and  eats  his  ration  before  his  young 
comrades  are  awake. 

The  failure  of  breakfast,  its  growing  ill  re 
pute  and  disfavor  are  not,  however,  wholly 
attributable  to  the  imperfections  of  our  social 
or  economic  system.  There  is  no  more  reason 
why  the  homes  of  the  humble  should  be  illu 
mined  by  a  happy  breakfast  table  than  that  the 
morning  scene  in  abodes  of  comfort  and  luxury 
should  express  cheer  and  a  confident  faith  in 
human  destiny.  Snobbishness  must  not  enter 
into  this  matter  of  breakfast  reform;  rich  and 
poor  alike  must  be  persuaded  that  the  morn 
ing  meal  is  deserving  of  all  respect,  that  it  is 
the  first  act  of  the  day's  drama,  not  to  be  per 
formed  in  a  slipshod  fashion  to  spoil  the  rest 
of  the  play.  It  is  the  first  chapter  of  a  story, 
and  every  one  who  has  dallied  with  the  art  of 
fiction  knows  that  not  merely  the  first  chapter 
but  the  first  line  must  stir  the  reader's  imag 
ination. 

Morning  has  been  much  sung  by  the  poets, 
some  of  them  no  doubt  wooing  the  lyre  in  bed. 

[72] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

A  bard  to  my  taste,  Benjamin  S.  Parker,  an 
Indiana  pioneer  and  poet  who  had  lived  in  a 
log  cabin  and  was,  I  am  persuaded,  an  early 
and  light-hearted  breakf aster,  wrote  many  verses 
on  which  the  dew  sparkles: 

"I  hacTa  dream  of  other  days, — 

In  golden  luxury  waved  the  wheat; 
In^tangled  greenness  shook  the  maize; 

The  squirrels  ran  with  nimble  feet, 
And  in  and  out  among  the  trees 

The  hangbird  darted  like  a  flame; 
The  catbird  piped  his  melodies, 

Purloining  every  warbler's  fame: 
And  then  I  heard  triumphal  song, 

'Tis  morning  and  the  days  are  long." 

I  hope  not  to  imperil  my  case  for  the  cheer 
ful  breakfast  table  by  asserting  too  much  in 
support  of  it,  but  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  contemptuous  disregard  in  which 
breakfast  is  now  held  by  thousands  of  Amer 
icans  is  indisputably  a  cause  of  the  low  state 
to  which  the  family  tie  has  fallen.  It  is  a  com 
mon  complaint  of  retrospective  elderly  per 
sons  that  the  family  life,  as  our  grandparents 
knew  it,  has  been  destroyed  by  the  haste  and 

[73] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

worry  incident  to  modern  conditions.  Break 
fast — a  leisurely,  jolly  affair  as  I  would  have 
it,  with  every  member  of  the  household  pres 
ent  on  the  stroke  of  the  gong — is  unequalled 
as  a  unifying  force.  The  plea  that  everybody 
is  in  a  hurry  in  the  morning  is  no  excuse;  if 
there  is  any  hour  when  haste  is  unprofitable 
it  is  that  first  morning  hour. 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  at  this  writing 
the  effect  of  the  daylight-saving  movement  up 
on  breakfast  and  civilization.  To  add  an  hour 
to  the  work-day  is  resented  by  sluggards  who, 
hearing  seven  chime,  reflect  that  it  is  really  only 
six,  and  that  a  little  self-indulgence  is  wholly 
pardonable.  However,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
change,  where  accepted  in  good  spirit,  may 
bring  many  to  a  realization  of  the  cheer  and 
inspiration  to  be  derived  from  early  rising. 

A  day  should  not  be  "jumped  into,"  but 
approached  tranquilly  and  with  respect  and 
enlivened  by  every  element  of  joy  that  can 
be  communicated  to  it.  At  noon  we  are  in  the 
midst  of  conflict;  at  nightfall  we  have  won  or 
lost  battles;  but  in  the  morning  "all  is  pos 
sible  and  all  unknown."  If  we  have  slept  like 

[74] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

honest  folk,  and  are  not  afraid  of  a  dash  of 
cold  water,  we  meet  the  day  blithely  and  with 
high  expectation.  If  the  day  dawn  brightly, 
there  is  good  reason  for  sharing  its  promise 
with  those  who  live  under  the  same  roof;  if 
it  be  dark  and  rain  beats  upon  the  pane,  even 
greater  is  the  need  of  family  communion,  that 
every  member  may  be  strengthened  for  valiant 
wrestling  with  the  day's  tasks. 

The  disorder  of  the  week-day  breakfast  in 
most  households  is  intensified  on  Sunday  morn 
ing,  when  we  are  all  prone  to  a  very  liberal 
interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  a  day  of  rest. 
There  was  a  time  not  so  long  ago  when  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  American  people  rose  on 
Sunday  morning  with  no  other  thought  but  to  go 
to  church.  Children  went  to  Sunday-school,  not 
infrequently  convoyed  by  their  parents.  I  hold 
no  brief  for  the  stern  inhibitions  of  the  mon 
strous  Puritan  Sunday  which  hung  over  child 
hood  like  a  gray,  smothering  cloud.  Every  one 
has  flung  a  brick  at  Protestantism  for  its  fail 
ures  of  reconstruction  and  readjustment  to 
modern  needs,  and  I  am  not  without  my  own 
shame  in  this  particular.  The  restoration  of 

[75] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

breakfast  to  its  rightful  place  would  do  much 
to  put  a  household  in  a  frame  of  mind  for  the 
contemplation  of  the  infinite.  Here,  at  least, 
we  are  unembarrassed  by  the  urgency  of  the 
tasks  of  every  day;  here,  for  once  in  the  week, 
at  an  hour  that  may  very  properly  be  set  for 
ward,  a  well-managed  family  may  meet  at 
table  and  infuse  into  the  gathering  the  spirit 
of  cheerful  yesterdays  and  confident  to-mor 
rows. 

No  better  opportunity  is  afforded  for  a 
friendly  exchange  of  confidences,  for  the  ut 
terance  of  words  of  encouragement  and  hope 
and  cheer.  Tommy,  if  he  has  been  dealt  with 
firmly  in  this  particular  on  earlier  occasions, 
will  not  revive  the  old  and  bothersome  ques 
tion  of  whether  he  shall  or  shall  not  go  to  Sun 
day-school.  If  he  is  a  stranger  to  that  institu 
tion  by  reason  of  parental  incompetence  or 
apostasy,  the  hour  is  not  a  suitable  one  for 
mama  to  make  timid  suggestions  as  to  the 
importance  of  biblical  instruction.  Nor  will 
eighteen-year-old  Madeline  renew  her  demand 
for  a  new  party  dress  when  this  matter  was 
disposed  of  definitely  Saturday  night.  Nor 

[76] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

will  the  father,  unless  he  be  of  the  stuff 
of  which  brutes  are  made,  open  a  debate  with 
his  wife  as  to  whether  he  shall  accompany  her 
to  church  or  go  to  the  club  for  a  luxurious  hour 
with  the  barber.  A  well-ordered  household  will 
not  begin  the  week  by  wrangling  on  a  morning 
that  should,  of  all  mornings,  be  consecrated  to 
serenity  and  peace. 

Great  numbers  of  American  households  are 
dominated  by  that  marvel  of  the  age,  the  Sun 
day  newspaper.  For  this  prodigious  expression 
of  journalistic  enterprise  I  have  only  the  warm 
est  admiration,  but  I  should  certainly  exclude 
it  from  the  breakfast  table  as  provocative  of 
discord  and  subversive  of  discipline.  Amusing 
as  the  "funny  page"  may  be,  its  color  scheme 
does  not  blend  well  either  with  soft-boiled  eggs 
or  marmalade.  Madeline's  appetite  for  news 
of  the  social  world  may  wait  a  little,  and  as 
there  is  no  possibility  of  buying  or  selling  on 
the  Sabbath-day,  the  gentleman  at  the  head 
of  the  table  may  as  well  curb  his  curiosity  about 
the  conclusions  of  the  weekly  market  review. 
Fragments  of  Sunday  newspapers  scattered 
about  a  breakfast  table  are  not  decorative. 

[77] 


THE   MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

They  encourage  bad  manners  and  selfishness. 
A  newspaper  is  an  impudent  intrusion  at  the 
table  at  any  time,  but  on  Sunday  its  presence 
is  a  crime.  On  an  occasion,  the  late  William 
Graham  Sumner  was  a  guest  in  my  house. 
Like  the  alert,  clear-thinking  philosopher  he 
was,  he  rose  early  and  read  the  morning  paper 
before  breakfast.  He  read  it  standing,  and 
finding  him  erect  by  a  window  with  the  jour 
nal  spread  wide  for  greater  ease  in  scanning  it 
quickly,  I  begged  him  to  be  seated.  "No,"  he 
answered;  " always  read  a  newspaper  stand 
ing;  you  won't  waste  time  on  it  that  way." 

With  equal  firmness  I  should  exclude  the 
morning  mail  from  the  table.  The  arrival  of 
the  post  is  in  itself  an  infringement  upon  do 
mestic  privacy,  and  the  reading  of  letters  is 
deadly  to  that  conversation  which  alone  can 
make  the  table  tolerable  at  any  meal.  Good 
news  can  wait;  bad  news  is  better  delayed 
until  the  mind  and  body  are  primed  to  deal 
with  it.  If  the  son  has  been  "canned"  at  school, 
or  if  the  daughter  has  overstepped  her  allow 
ance,  or  if  some  absent  member  of  the  family 
is  ill,  nothing  can  be  done  about  it  at  the  break- 

178] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

fast  table.  On  the  first  day  of  the  month,  the 
dumping  of  bills  on  the  table,  to  the  accom 
paniment  of  expostulations,  regrets,  and  per 
haps  tears,  should  be  forbidden.  Few  homes 
are  so  controlled  by  affection  and  generous 
impulses  as  to  make  possible  the  distribution 
of  bills  at  a  breakfast  table  without  poison 
ing  the  day.  A  tradesman  with  the  slightest 
feeling  of  delicacy  will  never  mail  a  bill  to 
be  delivered  on  the  morning  of  the  first 
day  of  the  month.  Anywhere  from  the  third 
or  fourth  to  the  twentieth,  and  so  timed  as 
to  be  delivered  in  the  afternoon — such  would 
be  my  suggestion  to  the  worthy  merchant. 
The  head  of  the  house  knows,  at  dinner  time, 
the  worst  that  the  day  has  for  him;  if  fortune 
has  smiled,  he  is  likely  to  be  merciful;  if  fate 
has  thrown  the  dice  against  him,  he  will  be 
humble.  And  besides,  a  discreet  wife,  receiving 
an  account  that  has  hung  over  her  head  ever 
since  she  made  that  sad,  rash  purchase,  has, 
if  the  bill  arrive  in  the  afternoon  post,  a  chance 
to  conceal  the  odious  thing  until  such  time  as 
the  domestic  atmosphere  is  clear  and  bright. 
Attempts  to  sneak  the  dressmaker's  bill  under 

[79] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

the  coffee-pot  are  fraught  with  peril;  such  con 
cealments  are  unworthy  of  American  woman 
hood.  Let  the  hour  or  half-hour  at  the  break 
fast  table  be  kept  free  of  the  taint  of  bargain 
and  sale,  a  quiet  vestibule  of  the  day,  barred 
against  importunate  creditors. 

As  against  the  tendency,  so  destructive  of 
good  health  and  mental  and  moral  efficiency, 
to  slight  breakfast,  the  food  manufacturers 
have  set  themselves  with  praiseworthy  deter 
mination  to  preserve  and  dignify  the  meal. 
One  has  but  to  peruse  the  advertising  pages 
of  the  periodicals  to  learn  of  the  many  tempt 
ing  preparations  that  are  offered  to  grace  the 
breakfast  table.  The  obtuse,  inured  to  hasty 
snatches,  nibbles,  and  sips,  are  assisted  to  a 
proper  appreciation  of  these  preparations  by 
the  most  enchanting  illustrations.  The  art  of 
publicity  has  spent  itself  lavishly  to  lure  the 
world  to  an  orderly  and  contemplative  break 
fast  with  an  infinite  variety  of  cereals  that 
have  been  subjected  to  processes  which  make 
them  a  boon  to  mankind.  When  I  hear  of  an 
addition  to  the  long  list,  I  fly  at  once  to  the 
grocer  to  obtain  one  of  the  crisp  packages,  and 

[so] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

hurry  home  to  deposit  it  with  the  cook  for  early 
experiment.  The  adventurous  sense  is  roused 
not  only  by  the  seductive  advertisement  but 
by  the  neatness  of  the  container,  the  ears  of 
corn  or  the  wheat  sheaf  so  vividly  depicted  on 
the  wrapper,  or  the  contagious  smile  of  a 
radiant  child  brandishing  a  spoon  and  demand 
ing  more. 

Only  a  slouchy  and  unimaginative  house 
wife  will  repeat  monotonously  a  breakfast 
schedule.  A  wise  rotation,  a  continual  surprise 
in  the  food  offered,  does  much  to  brighten 
the  table.  The  damnable  iteration  of  ham  and 
eggs  has  cracked  the  pillars  of  many  a  happy 
home.  There  should  be  no  ground  for  cavil; 
the  various  items  should  not  only  be  well- 
chosen,  but  each  dish  should  be  fashioned  as  for 
a  feast  of  high  ceremony.  Gluttony  is  a  grievous 
sin;  breakfast,  I  repeat,  should  be  a  spiritual 
repast.  If  fruit  is  all  that  the  soul  craves,  well 
enough;  but  let  it  be  of  paradisiacal  perfection. 
If  coffee  and  a  roll  satisfy  the  stomach's  crav 
ing,  let  the  one  be  clear  and  not  so  bitter  as 
to  keep  the  imbiber's  heart  protesting  all  day, 
and  the  other  hot  enough  to  melt  butter  and 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

of  ethereal  lightness.  The  egg  is  the  most  sinned 
against  of  all  foods.  It  would  seem  that  no  one 
could  or  would  wantonly  ruin  an  egg,  a  thing 
so  useful,  so  inoffensive;  and  yet  the  proper 
cooking  of  an  egg  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  of 
all  culinary  arts.  Millions  of  eggs  are  ruined 
every  year  in  American  kitchens.  Better  that 
the  whole  annual  output  should  be  cast  into 
the  sea  than  that  one  egg  should  offend  the 
eye  and  the  palate  of  the  expectant  breakf aster. 

It  grieves  me  to  be  obliged  to  confess  that 
in  hotels  and  on  dining-cars,  particularly  west 
of  Pittsburgh,  many  of  my  fellow  citizens  are 
weak  before  the  temptation  of  hot  cakes, 
drenched  in  syrup.  I  have  visited  homes  where 
the  griddle  is  an  implement  frequently  invoked 
through  the  winter  months,  and  I  have  at  times, 
in  my  own  house,  met  the  buckwheat  cake 
and  the  syrup  jug  and  meekly  fallen  before 
their  combined  assault;  but  the  sight  of  a  man 
eating  hot  cakes  on  a  flying  train,  after  a  night 
in  a  sleeper,  fills  me  with  a  sense  of  desolation. 
Verily  it  is  not  alone  the  drama  that  the  tired 
business  man  has  brought  to  low  estate ! 

Sausage  and  buckwheat  cakes  have  never 
[82] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

appealed  to  me  as  an  inevitable  combination 
like  ham  and  eggs.  Beefsteak  and  onions  at 
the  breakfast  hour  are  only  for  those  who  ex 
pect  to  devote  the  remainder  of  the  day  to 
crime  or  wood-chopping.  The  scent  in  itself 
is  not  the  incense  for  rosy-fingered  morn;  and 
steak  at  breakfast,  particularly  in  these  times 
of  perpendicular  prices,  speaks  for  vulgar 
display  rather  than  generosity. 

The  history  of  breakfast,  the  many  forms 
that  it  has  known,  the  customs  of  various  tribes 
and  nations,  assist  little  in  any  attempt  to  re 
establish  the  meal  in  public  confidence.  Plato 
may  have  done  his  loftiest  thinking  on  an 
empty  stomach;  I  incline  to  the  belief  that 
Sophocles  was  at  all  times  a  light  breakfaster; 
Horace  must  regret  that  he  passed  into  the 
Elysian  Fields  without  knowing  the  refreshing 
qualities  of  a  grapefruit.  If  my  post-mortem 
terminal  were  less  problematical,  I  should  like 
to  carry  him  a  grapefruit — a  specimen  not 
chilled  to  death  in  cold  storage — and  divide 
it  with  him,  perhaps  adding  a  splash  of 
Falernian  for  memory's  sake.  But  the  habits 
of  the  good  and  great  of  olden  times  are  not 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

of  the  slightest  importance  to  us  of  twentieth- 
century  America.  Still,  not  to  ignore  wholly 
the  familiar  literary  associations  suggested  by 
my  subject,  Samuel  Rogers  and  his  weakness 
for  entertaining  at  breakfast  shall  have  honor 
able  mention.  Rogers's  breakfasts,  one  of  his 
contemporaries  hinted,  were  a  cunning  test 
of  the  fitness  of  the  guests  to  be  promoted  to 
the  host's  dinner  table — a  process  I  should 
have  reversed,  on  the  theory  that  the  quali 
fications  for  breakfast  guests  are  far  more  ex 
acting  than  those  for  a  dinner  company.  We 
have  testimony  that  Rogers's  breakfasts,  in 
formal  and  with  every  one  at  ease,  were  much 
more  successful  than  his  dinners.  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  Byron  and  Moore,  Southey  and 
Macaulay,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Lord 
John  Russell  were  fellows  to  make  a  lively 
breakfast  table.  At  one  of  these  functions  Cole 
ridge  talked  for  three  hours  on  poetry,  an  oc 
casion  on  which,  we  may  assume,  the  variety 
or  quality  of  the  food  didn't  matter  greatly. 

Breakfast  as  a  social  medium  has  never 
flourished  in  America,  chiefly  because  of  our 
lack  of  leisure.  Where  recognized  at  all  it  is 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

thrown  into  the  middle  of  the  day  where  it 
becomes  an  anomaly,  an  impudent  intrusion. 
A  breakfast  that  is  a  luncheon  is  not  a  break 
fast,  but  a  concession  to  the  Philistines.  Once, 
with  considerable  difficulty,  I  persuaded  a 
lady  of  my  acquaintance  to  undertake  to  pop 
ularize  breakfast  by  asking  a  company,  few 
and  fit,  for  eight  o'clock.  The  first  party  was 
delightful,  and  the  second,  moved  along  to 
nine,  was  equally  successful.  But  the  hostess 
was  so  pleased  with  her  success  that  she  in 
creased  the  number  of  guests  to  a  dozen  and 
then  to  fifteen,  and  advanced  the  hour  to  noon, 
with  the  result  that  the  felicity  of  the  earlier 
hours  was  lost.  One  must  have  a  concrete  pro 
gramme  to  be  of  service  in  these  reforms,  and 
I  shall  say  quite  fearlessly  that  a  round  table 
set  for  six  is  the  ideal  arrangement. 

A  breakfast  must  be  planned  with  greatest 
care.  It  should  never  be  resorted  to  as  a  means 
of  paying  social  debts,  but  arranged  with  the 
utmost  independence.  Where  a  wife  is  a  de 
sirable  guest  and  the  husband  is  not,  there  is 
no  reason  why  a  plate  should  be  wasted.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  should  as  rigidly  exclude  the 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

wife  who  is  socially  a  non-conductor.  The  talk 
at  a  breakfast  table  must  be  spirited,  and  it 
will  not  be  otherwise  if  the  company  is  well 
chosen.  It's  an  absurd  idea  that  candle-light 
is  essential  to  sociability  and  that  wit  will  not 
sparkle  in  the  early  morning.  Some  of  the  best 
talk  I  ever  listened  to  has  been  at  breakfast 
tables,  where  the  guests  conversed  freely  under 
the  inspiration  of  a  mounting  sun.  Doctor 
Holmes  clearly  believed  the  breakfast  hour 
appropriate  for  the  disclosure  of  the  spright- 
liest  philosophy. 

An  American  novelist  once  explained  that 
he  did  his  writing  in  the  afternoon  because  he 
couldn't  make  love  in  the  morning.  Not  make 
love  in  the  morning !  The  thought  is  barbarous. 
Morning  is  of  sentiment  all  compact.  Morning 
to  the  lover  who  possesses  a  soul  is  washed 
with  Olympian  dews.  The  world  is  all  before 
him  where  to  choose  and  his  heart  is  his  only 
guide.  Love  is  not  love  that  fears  the  morn 
ing  light.  .  .  .  There  was  a  house  by  the  sea, 
whence  a  girl  used  to  dart  forth  every  morning 
for  a  run  over  the  rocks.  We  used  to  watch 
her  from  our  windows,  admiring  the  light- 
[86] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

ness  of  her  step,  her  unconscious  grace  as  she 
was  silhouetted  on  some  high  point  of  the  shore 
against  the  blue  of  sea  and  sky.  It  was  to  think 
of  him,  her  lover,  in  the  free  sanctuary  of  the 
new,  clean  day  that  she  ran  that  morning  race 
with  her  own  spirits.  And  he,  perhaps  knowing 
that  she  was  thus  preparing  herself  for  their 
first  meeting,  would  fly  after  her,  and  they 
would  come  running  back,  hand  in  hand,  and 
appear  with  glowing  cheeks  and  shining  eyes 
at  the  breakfast  table,  to  communicate  to  the 
rest  of  us  the  joy  of  youth. 

There  are  houses  in  which  participation  in 
the  family  breakfast  is  frankly  denied  to  the 
guest,  who  is  informed  that  by  pressing  a 
button  in  his  room  coffee  will  appear  at  any 
hour  that  pleases  his  fancy.  Let  us  consider 
this  a  little.  The  ideal  guest  is  rare;  the  num 
ber  of  persons  one  really  enjoys  having  about, 
free  to  penetrate  the  domestic  arcana,  is  small 
indeed.  This  I  say  who  am  not  an  inhospitable 
soul.  That  a  master  and  mistress  should  keep 
the  morning  free  is,  however,  no  sign  of  un 
friendliness;  the  shoving  of  breakfast  into  a 
room  does  not  argue  necessarily  for  churlish- 

[87] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

ness,  and  I  have  never  so  interpreted  it.  A 
hostess  has  her  own  affairs  to  look  after,  and 
the  despatch  of  trays  up-stairs  enables  her  to 
guard  her  morning  from  invasion.  Still,  in  a 
country  house,  a  guest  is  entitled  to  a  fair  shot 
at  the  morning.  The  day  is  happier  when  the 
household  assembles  at  a  fixed  hour  not  to  be 
trifled  with  by  a  lazy  and  inconsiderate  guest. 
Moreover,  we  are  entitled  to  know  what  our 
fellows  look  like  in  the  morning  hours.  I  have 
spoken  of  lovers,  and  there  is  no  sterner  test 
of  the  affections  than  a  breakfast-table  inspec 
tion.  Is  a  yawn  unbecoming  ?  We  have  a  right 
to  know  with  what  manner  of  yawn  we  are  to 
spend  our  lives.  Is  it  painful  to  listen  to  the 
crunching  of  toast  in  the  mouth  of  the  adored  ? 
Is  the  wit  laggard  in  the  morning  hours  when 
it  should  be  at  its  nimblest  ?  These  are  grave 
matters  not  lightly  to  be  brushed  aside.  At 
breakfast  the  blemish  in  the  damask  cheek 
publishes  itself  shamelessly;  an  evil  temper 
that  is  subdued  by  candle-light  will  betray 
itself  over  the  morning  coffee.  At  breakfast 
we  are  what  we  are,  and  not  what  we  may  make 
ourselves  for  good  or  ill  before  the  stars  twinkle. 
[88] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

I  protest  against  breakfast  in  bed  as  not 
only  unsocial  but  unbecoming  in  the  children 
of  democracy.  I  have  never  succumbed  to  this 
temptation  without  experiencing  a  feeling  of 
humiliation  and  cowardice.  A  proper  punish 
ment  for  such  self-indulgence  is  inflicted  by 
the  stray  crumbs  that  lodge  between  the  sheets 
unless  one  be  highly  skilled  in  the  handling 
of  breakfast  trays.  Crumbs  in  bed !  Procrustes 
missed  a  chance  here.  The  presence  of  emptied 
dishes  in  a  bedroom  is  disheartening  in  itself; 
the  sight  of  them  brings  to  a  sensitive  soul  a 
conviction  of  incompetence  and  defeat.  You 
cannot  evade  their  significance;  they  are  the 
wreck  of  a  battle  lost  before  you  have  buckled 
on  your  armor  or  fired  an  arrow  at  the  foe. 
My  experiments  have  been  chiefly  in  hotels, 
where  I  have  shrunk  from  appearing  in  a  vast 
hall  built  for  banqueting  and  wholly  unsuit 
able  for  breakfasting;  but  better  suffer  this 
gloomy  isolating  experience  than  huddle  be 
tween  covers  and  balance  a  tray  on  stubborn 
knees  that  rebel  at  the  indignity. 

The  club  breakfast  is  an  infamous  device 
designed  to  relieve  the  mind  of  what  should  be 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

the  pleasant  privilege  of  selection.  I  am  unin 
formed  as  to  who  invented  this  iniquity  of 
numbered  alternatives,  but  I  unhesitatingly 
pronounce  him  an  enemy  of  mankind.  Al 
ready  too  many  forces  are  operating  to  beat 
down  the  imagination.  I  charge  this  mon 
strosity  upon  the  propagandists  of  realism; 
certainly  no  romanticist  in  the  full  possession 
of  his  powers  would  tolerate  a  thing  so  deadly 
to  the  play  of  fancy.  I  want  neither  the  No.  7 
nor  the  No.  9  prescribed  on  the  card;  and  the 
waiter's  index  finger  wabbling  down  the  margin 
in  an  attempt  to  assist  me  is  an  affront,  an 
impudence.  Breakfast  should  be  an  affair  be 
tween  man  and  his  own  soul;  a  business  for 
the  initiative,  not  the  referendum. 

Breakfast  out  of  doors  is  the  ideal  arrange 
ment,  or  in  winter  under  an  ample  screen  of 
glass.  My  own  taste  is  for  a  perspective  of  sea 
or  lake;  but  a  lusty  young  river  at  the  elbow 
is  not  to  be  despised.  The  camper,  of  course, 
has  always  the  best  of  it;  a  breakfast  of  fresh- 
caught  trout  with  an  Indian  for  company  serves 
to  quicken  such  vestiges  of  the  primitive  as  re 
main  in  us.  But  we  do  not,  if  we  are  wise,  wait 

[90] 


THE  CHEERFUL  BREAKFAST  TABLE 

for  ideal  conditions.  It  is  a  part  of  the  great 
game  of  life  to  make  the  best  of  what  we  have, 
particularly  in  a  day  that  finds  the  world 
spinning  madly  "down  the  ringing  grooves 
of  change." 

The  breakfast  table  must  be  made  a  safe 
place  for  humanity,  an  inspirational  centre  of 
democracy.  A  land  whose  people  drowsily  turn 
over  for  another  nap  at  eight  o'clock,  or  lan 
guidly  ring  for  coffee  at  eleven,  is  doomed  to 
destruction.  Of  such  laziness  is  unprepared- 
ness  born — the  vanguard  of  the  enemy  already 
howling  at  the  postern;  treason  rampant  in 
the  citadel;  wailing  in  the  court.  Breakfast,  a 
sensible  meal  at  a  seasonable  hour;  sausage  or 
beefsteak  if  you  are  capable  of  such  atrocities; 
or  only  a  juicy  orange  if  your  appetite  be 
dainty;  but  breakfast,  a  cheerful  breakfast 
with  family  or  friends,  no  matter  how  great 
the  day's  pressure.  This,  partaken  of  in  a  mood 
of  kindliness  and  tolerance  toward  all  the  world, 
is  a  definite  accomplishment.  By  so  much  we 
are  victors,  and  whether  the  gulfs  wash  us  down 
or  we  sight  the  happy  isles  we  have  set  sail  with 
flags  flying  and  to  the  stirring  roll  of  drums. 

[91] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

NOTHING   was   ever  funnier  than  Bar 
ton's     election     to    the    city    council. 
However,  it  occurs  to  me  that  if  I'm 
going  to  speak  of  it  at  all,  I  may  as  well  tell 
the  whole  story. 

At  the  University  Club,  where  a  dozen  of 
us  have  met  for  luncheon  every  business  day 
for  many  years,  Barton's  ideas  on  the  subject 
of  municipal  reform  were  always  received  in 
the  most  contumelious  fashion.  We  shared  his 
rage  that  things  were  as  they  were,  but  as  prac 
tical  business  men  we  knew  that  there  was  no 
remedy.  A  city,  Barton  held,  should  be  con 
ducted  like  any  other  corporation.  Its  affairs 
are  so  various,  and  touch  so  intimately  the 
comfort  and  security  of  all  of  us,  that  it  is  im 
perative  that  they  be  administered  by  servants 
of  indubitable  character  and  special  training. 
He  would  point  out  that  a  citizen's  rights  and 
privileges  are  similar  to  those  of  a  stockholder, 
and  that  taxes  are  in  effect  assessments  to 
which  we  submit  only  in  the  belief  that  the 

[92] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

sums  demanded  are  necessary  to  the  wise  han 
dling  of  the  public  business;  that  we  should  be 
as  anxious  for  dividends  in  the  form  of  efficient 
and  economical  service  as  we  are  for  cash  divi 
dends  in  other  corporations. 

There  is  nothing  foolish  or  unreasonable  in 
these  notions;  but  most  of  us  are  not  as  in 
genious  as  Barton,  or  as  resourceful  as  he  in 
finding  means  of  realizing  them. 

Barton  is  a  lawyer  and  something  of  a  cynic. 
I  have  never  known  a  man  whose  command 
of  irony  equalled  his.  He  usually  employed  it, 
however,  with  perfect  good  nature,  and  it  was 
impossible  to  ruffle  him.  In  the  court-room  I 
have  seen  him  the  target  for  attacks  by  a  for 
midable  array  of  opposing  counsel,  and  have 
heard  him  answer  an  hour's  argument  in  an 
incisive  reply  compressed  into  ten  minutes. 
His  suggestions  touching  municipal  reforms 
were  dismissed  as  impractical,  which  was  ab 
surd,  for  Barton  is  essentially  a  practical  man, 
as  his  professional  successes  clearly  proved 
before  he  was  thirty.  He  maintained  that  one 
capable  man,  working  alone,  could  revolutionize 
a  city's  government  if  he  set  about  it  in  the  right 

[93) 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

spirit;  and  he  manifested  the  greatest  scorn  for 
"movements,"  committees  of  one  hundred,  and 
that  sort  of  thing.  He  had  no  great  confidence  in 
the  mass  of  mankind  or  in  the  soundness  of 
the  majority.  His  ideas  were,  we  thought,  often 
fantastic,  but  it  could  never  be  said  that  he 
lacked  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  He  once 
assembled  round  a  mahogany  table  the  presi 
dents  of  the  six  principal  banks  and  trust  com 
panies  in  our  town  and  laid  before  them  a  plan 
by  which,  through  the  smothering  of  the  city's 
credit,  a  particularly  vicious  administration 
might  be  brought  to  terms.  The  city  finances 
were  in  a  bad  way,  and,  as  the  result  of  a  policy 
of  wastefulness  and  short-sightedness,  the  ad 
ministration  was  constantly  seeking  temporary 
loans,  which  the  local  banks  were  expected  to 
carry.  Barton  dissected  the  municipal  budget 
before  the  financiers,  and  proposed  that,  as 
another  temporary  accommodation  was  about 
to  be  asked,  they  put  the  screws  on  the  mayor 
and  demand  that  he  immediately  force  the 
resignations  of  all  his  important  appointees 
and  replace  them  with  men  to  be  designated 
by  three  citizens  to  be  named  by  the  bankers. 

[94] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

Barton  had  carefully  formulated  the  whole 
matter,  and  he  presented  it  with  his  usual  clar 
ity  and  effectiveness;  but  rivalry  between  the 
banks  for  the  city's  business,  and  fear  of  in 
curring  the  displeasure  of  some  of  their  in 
dividual  depositors  who  were  closely  allied 
with  the  bosses  of  the  bipartisan  machine, 
caused  the  scheme  to  be  rejected.  Our  lunch- 
table  strategy  board  was  highly  amused  by 
Barton's  failure,  which  was  just  what  we  had 
predicted. 

Barton  accepted  his  defeat  with  equanimity 
and  spoke  kindly  of  the  bankers  as  good  men 
but  deficient  in  courage.  But  in  the  primaries 
the  following  spring  he  got  himself  nominated 
for  city  councilman.  No  one  knew  just  how 
he  had  accomplished  this.  Of  course,  as  things 
go  in  our  American  cities,  no  one  qualified  for 
membership  in  a  university  club  is  eligible 
for  any  municipal  office,  and  no  man  of  our 
acquaintance  had  ever  before  offered  himself 
for  a  position  so  utterly  without  honor  or 
dignity.  Even  more  amazing  than  Barton's 
nomination  was  Barton's  election.  Our  council- 
men  are  elected  at  large,  and  we  had  assumed 

[95] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

that  any  strength  he  might  develop  in  the 
more  prosperous  residential  districts  would  be 
overbalanced  by  losses  in  industrial  neighbor 
hoods. 

The  results  proved  to  be  quite  otherwise. 
Barton  ran  his  own  campaign.  He  made  no 
speeches,  but  spent  the  better  part  of  two 
months  personally  appealing  to  mechanics  and 
laborers,  usually  in  their  homes  or  on  their 
door-steps.  He  was  at  pains  to  keep  out  of  the 
newspapers,  and  his  own  party  organization 
(he  is  a  Republican)  gave  him  only  the  most 
grudging  support. 

We  joked  him  a  good  deal  about  his  election 
to  an  office  that  promised  nothing  to  a  man 
of  his  type  but  annoyance  and  humiliation. 
His  associates  in  the  council  were  machine 
men,  who  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  en 
lightened  methods  of  conducting  cities.  The 
very  terminology  in  which  municipal  govern 
ment  is  discussed  by  the  informed  was  as 
strange  to  them  as  Sanskrit.  His  Republican 
colleagues  cheerfully  ignored  him,  and  shut 
him  out  of  their  caucuses;  the  Democrats  re 
sented  his  appearance  in  the  council  chamber 

[96] 


THE  BOULEFARD  OF  ROGUES 

as  an  unwarranted  intrusion — "almost  an  in 
delicacy,"  to  use  Barton's  own  phrase. 

The  biggest  joke  of  all  was  Barton's  appoint 
ment  to  the  chairmanship  of  the  Committee 
on  Municipal  Art.  That  this  was  the  only  recog 
nition  his  associates  accorded  to  the  keenest 
lawyer  in  the  State — a  man  possessing  a  broad 
knowledge  of  municipal  methods,  gathered  in 
every  part  of  the  world — was  ludicrous,  it  must 
be  confessed;  but  Barton  was  not  in  the  least 
disturbed,  and  continued  to  suffer  our  chaff 
with  his  usual  good  humor. 

Barton  is  a  secretive  person,  but  we  learned 
later  that  he  had  meekly  asked  the  president 
of  the  council  to  give  him  this  appointment. 
And  it  was  conferred  upon  him  chiefly  because 
no  one  else  wanted  it,  there  being,  obviously, 
"nothing  in"  municipal  art  discernible  to  the 
bleared  eye  of  the  average  councilman. 

About  that  time  old  Sam  Follonsby  died, 
bequeathing  half  a  million  dollars — twice  as 
much  as  anybody  knew  he  had — to  be  spent 
on  fountains  and  statues  in  the  city  parks  and 
along  the  boulevards. 

The  many   attempts  of  the  administration 

(97  I 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

to  divert  the  money  to  other  uses;  the  efforts 
of  the  mayor  to  throw  the  estate  into  the  hands 
of  a  trust  company  in  which  he  had  friends 
— these  matters  need  not  be  recited  here. 

Suffice  it  to  say  that  Barton  was  equal  to 
all  the  demands  made  upon  his  legal  genius. 
When  the  estate  was  settled  at  the  end  of  a 
year,  Barton  had  won  every  point.  Follonsby's 
money  was  definitely  set  aside  by  the  court 
as  a  special  fund  for  the  objects  specified  by 
the  testator,  and  Barton,  as  the  chairman  of 
the  Committee  on  Municipal  Art,  had  so  tied 
it  up  in  a  legal  mesh  of  his  own  ingenious  con 
triving  that  it  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes, 
subject  only  to  his  personal  check. 

It  was  now  that  Barton,  long  irritated  by 
the  indifference  of  our  people  to  the  impera 
tive  need  of  municipal  reform,  devised  a  plan 
for  arousing  the  apathetic  electorate.  A  phi 
losopher,  as  well  as  a  connoisseur  in  the  fine 
arts,  he  had  concluded  that  our  whole  idea  of 
erecting  statues  to  the  good  and  noble  serves 
no  purpose  in  stirring  patriotic  impulses  in  the 
bosoms  of  beholders.  There  were  plenty  of 
statues  and  not  a  few  tablets  in  our  town  com- 

[98] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

memorating  great-souled  men,  but  they  suf 
fered  sadly  from  public  neglect.  And  it  must 
be  confessed  that  the  average  statue,  no  matter 
how  splendid  the  achievements  of  its  subject, 
is  little  regarded  and  serves  only  passively  as 
a  reminder  of  public  duty.  With  what  has 
seemed  to  me  a  sublime  cynicism,  Barton  pro 
ceeded  to  spend  Follonsby's  money  in  a  manner 
at  once  novel  and  arresting.  He  commissioned 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  sculptors  in  the 
country  to  design  a  statue;  and  at  the  end  of 
his  second  year  in  the  council  (he  had  been 
elected  for  four  years),  it  was  set  up  on  the 
new  boulevard  that  parallels  the  river. 

His  choice  of  a  subject  had  never  been  made 
known,  so  that  curiosity  was  greatly  excited 
on  the  day  of  the  unveiling.  Barton  had  brought 
the  governor  of  an  adjoining  State,  who  was 
just  then  much  in  the  public  eye  as  a  fighter 
of  grafters,  to  deliver  the  oration.  It  was  a 
speech  with  a  sting  to  it,  but  our  people  had 
long  been  hardened  to  such  lashings.  The  mayor 
spoke  in  praise  of  the  civic  spirit  which  had 
impelled  Follonsby  to  make  so  large  a  bequest 
to  the  public;  and  then,  before  five  thousand 

[99] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

persons,  a  little  schoolgirl  pulled  the  cord,  and 
the  statue,  a  splendid  creation  in  bronze,  was 
exposed  to  the  amazed  populace. 

I  shall  not  undertake  to  depict  the  horror 
and  chagrin  of  the  assembled  citizens  when 
they  beheld,  instead  of  the  statue  of  Follonsby, 
which  they  were  prepared  to  see,  or  a  symbolic 
representation  of  the  city  itself  as  a  flower- 
crowned  maiden,  the  familiar  pudgy  figure, 
reproduced  with  the  most  cruel  fidelity,  of 
Mike  O'Grady,  known  as  "Silent  Mike,"  a 
big  bipartisan  boss  who  had  for  years  domi 
nated  municipal  affairs,  and  who  had  but  lately 
gone  to  his  reward.  The  inscription  in  itself 
was  an  ironic  master-stroke: 

To 

Michael  P.  O'Grady 
Protector  of  Saloons,  Friend  of  Crooks 

For  Ten  Years  a  City  Councilman 
Dominating  the  Affairs  of  the  Municipality 

This  Statue  is  Erected 

By  Grateful  Fellow-Citizens 

In  Recognition  of  his  Public  Services 

The  effect  of  this  was  tremendously  disturb 
ing,  as  may  be  imagined.  Every  newspaper  in 
[  100  ] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

America  printed  a  picture  of  the  O'Grady 
statue;  our  rival  cities  made  merry  over  it  at 
our  expense.  The  Chamber  of  Commerce,  in 
censed  at  the  affront  to  the  city's  good  name, 
passed  resolutions  condemning  Barton  in  the 
bitterest  terms;  the  local  press  howled;  a  mass- 
meeting  was  held  in  our  biggest  hall  to  voice 
public  indignation.  But  amid  the  clamor  Bar 
ton  remained  calm,  pointing  to  the  stipulation 
in  Follonsby's  will  that  his  money  should  be 
spent  in  memorials  of  men  who  had  enjoyed 
most  fully  the  confidence  of  the  people.  And  as 
O'Grady  had  been  permitted  for  years  to  run 
the  town  about  as  he  liked,  with  only  feeble 
protests  and  occasional  futile  efforts  to  get  rid 
of  him,  Barton  was  able  to  defend  himself 
against  all  comers. 

Six  months  later  Barton  set  up  on  the  same 
boulevard  a  handsome  tablet  commemorating 
the  services  of  a  mayor  whose  venality  had 
brought  the  city  to  the  verge  of  bankruptcy, 
and  who,  when  his  term  of  office  expired,  had 
betaken  himself  to  parts  unknown.  This  was 
greeted  with  another  outburst  of  rage,  much 
to  Barton's  delight.  After  a  brief  interval  an- 
[101] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

other  tablet  was  placed  on  one  of  the  river 
bridges.  The  building  of  that  particular  bridge 
had  been  attended  with  much  scandal,  and 
the  names  of  the  councilmanic  committee  who 
were  responsible  for  it  were  set  forth  over  these 
figures : 

Cost  to  the  People $249,950.00 

Cost  to  the  Council 131,272.81 

Graft $118,677.19 

The  figures  were  exact  and  a  matter  of  record. 
An  impudent  prosecuting  attorney  who  had 
broken  with  the  machine  had  laid  them  before 
the  public  some  time  earlier;  but  his  efforts 
to  convict  the  culprits  had  been  frustrated  by 
a  judge  of  the  criminal  court  who  took  orders 
from  the  bosses.  Barton  broke  his  rule  against 
talking  through  the  newspapers  by  issuing  a 
caustic  statement  imploring  the  infuriated 
councilmen  to  sue  him  for  libel  as  they  threat 
ened  to  do. 

The  city  was  beginning  to  feel  the  edge  of 
Barton's  little  ironies.  At  the  club  we  all  real 
ized  that  he  was  animated  by  a  definite  and 
high  purpose  in  thus  flaunting  in  enduring 
bronze  the  shame  of  the  city. 

[102] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

"It  is  to  such  men  as  these,"  said  Barton, 
referring  to  the  gentlemen  he  had  favored  with 
his  statue  and  tablets,  "that  we  confide  all 
our  affairs.  For  years  we  have  stupidly  allowed 
a  band  of  outlaws  to  run  our  town.  They  spend 
our  money;  they  manage  in  their  own  way 
large  affairs  that  concern  all  of  us;  they  sneer 
at  all  the  forces  of  decency;  they  have  made 
serfs  of  us.  These  scoundrels  are  our  creatures, 
and  we  encourage  and  foster  them;  they  repre 
sent  us  and  our  ideals,  and  it's  only  fitting  that 
we  should  publish  their  merits  to  the  world." 

While  Barton  was  fighting  half  a  dozen  in 
junction  suits  brought  to  thwart  the  further 
expenditure  of  Follonsby's  money  for  memorials 
of  men  of  notorious  misfeasance  or  malfeasance, 
another  city  election  rolled  round.  By  this 
time  there  had  been  a  revulsion  of  feeling.  The 
people  began  to  see  that  after  all  there  might 
be  a  way  of  escape.  Even  the  newspapers  that 
had  most  bitterly  assailed  Barton  declared 
that  he  was  just  the  man  for  the  mayoralty, 
and  he  was  fairly  driven  into  office  at  the  head 
of  a  non-partisan  municipal  ticket. 

The  Boulevard  of  Rogues  we  called  it  for 

[  103] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

a  time.  But  after  Barton  had  been  in  the 
mayor's  office  a  year  he  dumped  the  O'Grady 
statue  into  the  river,  destroyed  the  tablets, 
and  returned  to  the  Follonsby  Fund  out  of 
his  own  pocket  the  money  he  had  paid  for  them. 
Three  noble  statues  of  honest  patriots  now 
adorn  the  boulevard,  and  half  a  dozen  beau 
tiful  fountains  have  been  distributed  among 
the  parks. 

The  Barton  plan  is,  I  submit,  worthy  of  all 
emulation.  If  every  boss-ridden,  machine-man 
aged  American  city  could  once  visualize  its 
shame  and  folly  as  Barton  compelled  us  to 
do,  there  would  be  less  complaint  about  the 
general  failure  of  local  government.  There  is, 
when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  nothing  so  pre 
posterous  in  the  idea  of  perpetuating  in  out 
ward  and  visible  forms  the  public  servants  we 
humbly  permit  to  misgovern  us.  Nothing  could 
be  better  calculated  to  quicken  the  civic  im 
pulse  in  the  lethargic  citizen  than  the  enforced 
contemplation  of  a  line  of  statues  erected  to 
rascals  who  have  prospered  at  the  expense  of 
the  community. 

I'm  a  little  sorry,  though,  that  Barton  never 

[  104] 


THE  BOULEVARD  OF  ROGUES 

carried  out  one  of  his  plans,  which  looked  to 
the  planting  in  the  centre  of  a  down-town  park 
of  a  symbolic  figure  of  the  city,  felicitously 
expressed  by  a  barroom  loafer  dozing  on  a 
whiskey  barrel.  I  should  have  liked  it,  and 
Barton  confessed  to  me  the  other  day  that  he 
was  a  good  deal  grieved  himself  that  he  had  not 
pulled  it  off! 


[105] 


THE  OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN 
NOVELISTS 


THIS  is  the  open  season  for  American 
novelists.  The  wardens  are  in  hiding 
and  any  one  with  a  blunderbuss  and  a 
horn  of  powder  is  entitled  to  all  the  game  he 
can  kill.  The  trouble  was  started  by  Mr.  Ed 
ward  Garnett,  a  poacher  from  abroad,  who 
crawled  under  the  fence  and  wrought  great 
havoc  before  he  was  detected.  His  invasion 
roused  the  envy  of  scores  of  native  hunters, 
and  at  their  behest  all  laws  for  game  protection 
have  been  suspended,  to  satisfy  the  general 
craving  for  slaughter.  Mr.  Owen  Wister  on  his 
bronco  leads  the  field,  a  daring  and  orgulous 
knight,  sincerely  jealous  for  the  good  name  of 
the  ranges.  The  fact  that  I  was  once  beguiled 
by  an  alluring  title  into  purchasing  one  of  his 
books  in  the  fond  hope  that  it  would  prove  to 
be  a  gay  romance  about  a  lady,  only  to  find 
that  the  heroine  was,  in  fact,  a  cake,  does  not 
[106] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

alter  my  amiable  feelings  toward  him.  I  made 
a  pious  pilgrimage  to  the  habitat  of  that  cake 
and  invested  in  numerous  replicas  for  distribu 
tion  all  the  way  from  Colorado  to  Maine,  ac 
companied  by  copies  of  the  novel  that  so 
adroitly  advertised  it — a  generosity  which  I 
have  refrained  from  mentioning  to  Mr.  Wister 
or  his  publisher  to  this  day. 

Mr.  Wister's  personal  experiences  have 
touched  our  oldest  and  newest  civilization, 
and  it  is  not  for  me  to  quarrel  with  him.  Nor 
should  I  be  saddling  Rosinante  for  a  trot  over 
the  fearsome  range  had  he  not  taken  a  pot 
shot  at  poor  old  Democracy,  that  venerable 
offender  against  the  world's  peace  and  dignity. 
To  drive  Mr.  Bryan  and  Mr.  Harold  Bell 
Wright  into  a  lonely  cleft  of  the  foot-hills  and 
rope  and  tie  them  together  seems  to  me  an 
act  of  inhumanity  unworthy  of  a  good  sports 
man.  As  I  am  unfamiliar  with  Mr.  Wright's 
writings,  I  can  only  express  my  admiration 
for  Mr.  Wister's  temerity  in  approaching  them 
close  enough  to  apply  the  branding-iron.  Mr. 
Bryan  as  the  protagonist  of  Democracy  may 
not  be  dismissed  so  easily.  To  be  sure,  he  has 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

never  profited  by  any  ballot  of  mine,  but  he 
has  at  times  laid  the  lash  with  a  sure  hand  on 
shoulders  that  needed  chastisement.  However, 
it  is  the  free  and  unlimited  printing  of  novels 
that  here  concerns  us,  not  the  consecration  of 
silver. 

Democracy  is  not  so  bad  as  its  novels,  nor, 
for  that  matter,  is  a  constitutional  monarchy. 
The  taste  of  many  an  American  has  been  de 
based  by  English  fiction.  At  the  risk  of  appear 
ing  ungracious,  I  fling  in  Mr.  Garnett's  teeth 
an  armful  of  the  writings  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine, 
Mrs.  Barclay,  and  Marie  Corelli.  The  slightest 
regard  for  the  literary  standards  of  a  young 
and  struggling  republic  should  prompt  the 
mother  country  to  keep  her  trash  at  home.  It 
is  our  most  grievous  sin  that  we  have  merely 
begun  to  manufacture  our  own  rubbish,  in  a 
commendable  spirit  of  building  up  home  in 
dustries.  In  my  youth  I  was  prone  to  indulge  in 
pirated  reprints  of  engrossing  tales  of  adorable 
curates'  nieces  who  were  forever  playing  Cinder 
ella  at  hunt  balls,  and  breaking  all  the  hearts 
in  the  county.  They  were  dukes'  daughters, 
really,  changed  in  the  cradle — Trollope,  with 
[108] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

a  dash  of  bitters;  but  their  effect  upon  me  I 
believe  to  have  been  baneful. 

A  lawyer  of  my  acquaintance  used  to  re 
mark  in  opening  a  conference  with  opposing 
counsel:  "I  am  merely  thinking  aloud;  I  don't 
want  to  be  bound  by  anything  I  say/'  It  is  a 
good  deal  in  this  spirit  that  I  intrude  upon 
the  field  of  carnage,  fortified  with  a  white  flag 
and  a  Red  Cross  badge.  The  gentle  conde 
scension  of  foreign  critics  we  shall  overlook  as 
lacking  in  novelty;  moreover,  Mr.  Lowell  dis 
posed  of  that  attitude  once  and  for  all  time. 

If  anything  more  serious  is  to  be  required 
in  this  engagement  than  these  casual  shots 
from  my  pop-gun  I  hastily  tender  my  proxy 
to  Mr.  Howells.  And  I  am  saying  (in  a  husky 
aside)  that  if  in  England,  our  sadly  myopic 
stepmother,  any  one  now  living  has  served 
letters  with  anything  like  the  high-minded 
devotion  of  Mr.  Howells,  or  with  achievements 
comparable  to  his  for  variety,  sincerity,  and 
distinction,  I  shall  be  glad  to  pay  postage  for 
his  name. 

We  must  not  call  names  or  make  faces,  but 
address  ourselves  cheerfully  to  the  business  at 

[109] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

hand.  The  American  novel  is,  beyond  question, 
in  a  bad  way.  Something  is  radically  wrong 
with  it.  The  short  story,  too,  is  under  fire.  Pro 
fessor  Canby  would  clap  a  Russian  blouse  on 
it  and  restore  its  first  fine  careless  rapture. 
He  makes  out  a  good  case  and  I  cheerfully 
support  his  cause,  with,  however,  a  reservation 
that  we  try  the  effect  of  American  overalls 
and  jumper  before  committing  ourselves  fully 
to  Slavic  vestments.  In  my  anxiety  to  be  of 
service  to  the  friends  of  American  fiction,  I 
am  willing  to  act  as  pall-bearer  or  officiating 
minister,  or  even  as  corpse,  with  proper  guaran 
ties  of  decent  burial. 


II 

Our  slow  advance  in  artistic  achievement 
has  been  defended  on  the  plea  that  we  have 
no  background,  no  perspective,  and  that  our 
absorption  in  business  affairs  leaves  no  time 
for  that  serene  contemplation  of  life  that  is 
essential  to  the  highest  attainments.  To  omit 
the  obvious  baccalaureate  bromide  that  we  are 
inheritors  of  the  lore  of  all  the  ages,  it  may  be 

[no] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

suggested  that  our  deficiencies  in  the  creative 
arts  are  overbalanced  by  the  prodigious  labors 
of  a  people  who  have  lived  a  great  drama  in 
founding  and  maintaining  a  new  social  and 
political  order  within  little  more  than  a  cen 
tury. 

Philosophers  intent  upon  determining  the 
causes  of  our  failure  to  contribute  more  im 
portantly  to  all  the  arts  have  suggested  that 
our  creative  genius  has  been  diverted  into 
commercial  and  industrial  channels;  that  Bell 
and  Edison  have  stolen  and  imprisoned  the 
Promethean  fire,  while  the  altars  of  the  arts 
have  been  left  cold.  Instead  of  sending  man 
kind  whirling  over  hill  and  dale  at  a  price  with 
in  the  reach  of  all,  Mr.  Henry  Ford  might  have 
been  our  enlaurelled  Thackeray  if  only  he  had 
been  born  beneath  a  dancing  star  instead  of 
under  the  fiery  wheels  of  Ezekiel's  vision. 

The  preachiness  of  our  novels,  of  which  critics 
complain  with  some  bitterness,  may  be  repre 
hensible,  but  it  is  not  inexplicable.  We  are  a 
people  bred  upon  the  Bible;  it  was  the  only 
book  carried  into  the  wilderness;  it  still  has 
a  considerable  following  among  us,  and  all 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

reports  of  our  depravity  are  greatly  exag 
gerated.  We  are  inured  to  much  preaching. 
We  tolerate  where  we  do  not  admire  Mr.  Bryan, 
because  he  is  the  last  of  the  circuit-riders,  a 
tireless  assailant  of  the  devil  and  all  his  works. 
I  am  aware  of  growls  from  the  Tory  benches 
as  I  timidly  venture  the  suggestion — fully 
conscious  of  its  impiety — that  existing  cos 
mopolitan  standards  may  not  always  with 
justice  be  applied  to  our  literary  performances. 
The  late  Colonel  Higginson  once  supported 
this  position  with  what  strikes  me  as  an  ex 
cellent  illustration.  "When,"  he  wrote,  "a 
vivacious  Londoner  like  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
attempts  to  deal  with  that  profound  imagina 
tive  creation,  Arthur  Dimmesdale  in  The  Scar 
let  Letter,  he  fails  to  comprehend  him  from  an 
obvious  and  perhaps  natural  want  of  acquain 
tance  with  the  whole  environment  of  the  man. 
To  Mr.  Lang  he  is  simply  a  commonplace  cler 
ical  Lovelace,  a  dissenting  clergyman  caught 
in  a  shabby  intrigue.  But  if  this  clever  writer 
had  known  the  Puritan  clergy  as  we  know  them, 
the  high  priests  of  a  Jewish  theocracy,  with  the 
whole  work  of  God  in  a  strange  land  resting  on 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

their  shoulders,  he  would  have  comprehended 
the  awful  tragedy  in  this  tortured  soul." 

In  the  same  way  the  exalted  place  held  by 
Emerson  in  the  affections  of  those  of  us  who 
are  the  fortunate  inheritors  of  the  Emerson 
tradition  can  hardly  be  appreciated  by  for 
eign  critics  to  whom  his  writings  seem  curiously 
formless  and  his  reasoning  absurdly  tangential. 
He  may  not  have  been  a  great  philosopher,  but 
he  was  a  great  philosopher  for  America.  There 
were  English  critics  who  complained  bitterly  of 
Mark  Twain's  lack  of  "form,"  and  yet  I  can 
imagine  that  his  books  might  have  lost  the 
tang  and  zest  we  find  in  them  if  they  had  con 
formed  to  Old-World  standards. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  English  in  which 
our  novels  are  written  must  be  defended  by 
abler  pens  than  mine.  Just  why  American  prose 
is  so  slouchy,  so  lacking  in  distinction,  touches 
questions  that  are  not  for  this  writing.  I  shall 
not  even  "think  aloud"  about  them !  And  yet, 
so  great  is  my  anxiety  to  be  of  service  and  to 
bring  as  much  gaiety  to  the  field  as  possible, 
that  I  shall  venture  one  remark:  that  perhaps 
the  demand  on  the  part  of  students  in  our  col- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

leges  to  be  taught  to  write  short  stories,  novels, 
and  dramas — and  the  demand  is  insistent — 
has  obscured  the  importance  of  mastering  a 
sound  prose  before  any  attempt  is  made  to  em 
ploy  it  creatively.  It  certainly  cannot  be  com 
plained  that  the  literary  impulse  is  lacking, 
when  publishers,  editors,  and  theatrical  pro 
ducers  are  invited  to  inspect  thousands  of 
manuscripts  every  year.  The  editor  of  a  pop 
ular  magazine  declares  that  there  are  only 
fifteen  American  writers  who  are  capable  of 
producing  a  "good"  short  story;  and  this, 
too,  at  a  time  when  short  fiction  is  in  greater 
demand  than  ever  before,  and  at  prices  that 
would  cause  Poe  and  De  Maupassant  to  turn 
in  their  graves.  A  publisher  said  recently  that 
he  had  examined  twenty  novels  from  one  writer, 
not  one  of  which  he  considered  worth  publish 
ing. 

Many,  indeed,  are  called  but  few  are  chosen, 
and  some  reason  must  be  found  for  the  low 
level  of  our  fiction  where  the  output  is  so  great. 
The  fault  is  not  due  to  unfavorable  atmos 
pheric  conditions,  but  to  timidity  on  the  part 
of  writers  in  seizing  upon  the  obvious  American 

[H4l 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

material.  Sidney  Lanier  remarked  of  Poe  that 
he  was  a  great  poet,  but  that  he  did  not  know 
enough — meaning  that  life  in  its  broad  aspects 
had  not  touched  him.  A  lack  of  "information," 
of  understanding  and  vision,  is,  I  should  say, 
the  fundamental  weakness  of  the  American 
novel.  To  see  life  steadily  and  whole  is  a  large 
order,  and  prone  as  we  are  to  skim  light- 
heartedly  the  bright  surfaces,  we  are  not  easily 
to  be  persuaded  to  creep  to  the  rough  edges 
and  peer  into  the  depths.  We  have  not  always 
been  anxious  to  welcome  a  "physician  of  the 
iron  age"  capable  of  reading  "each  wound, 
each  weakness  clear,"  and  saying  "thou  ailest 
here  and  here"!  It  is  not  "competent"  for 
the  artist  to  plead  the  unattractiveness  of  his 
material  at  the  bar  of  letters;  it  is  his  busi 
ness  to  make  the  best  of  what  he  finds  ready 
to  his  hand.  It  is  because  we  are  attempting  to 
adjust  humanity  to  new  ideals  of  liberty  that 
we  offer  to  ourselves,  if  not  to  the  rest  of  the 
world,  a  pageant  of  ceaseless  interest  and  va 
riety. 

It  may  be  that  we  are  too  much  at  ease  in 
our  Zion  for  a  deeper  probing  of  life  than  our 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

fiction  has  found  ^it  agreeable  to  make.  And 
yet  we  are  a  far  soberer  people  than  we  were 
when  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  complained  of  our 
lack  of  intellectual  seriousness.  The  majority 
has  proved  its  soundness  in  a  number  of  in 
stances  since  he  wrote  of  us.  We  are  less  im 
patient  of  self-scrutiny.  Our  newly  awakened 
social  consciousness  finds  expression  in  many 
books  of  real  significance,  and  it  is  inevitable 
that  our  fiction  shall  reflect  this  new  sobriety. 
Unfortunately,  since  the  passing  of  our  New 
England  Olympians,  literature  as  a  vocation 
has  had  little  real  dignity  among  us;  we  have 
had  remarkably  few  novelists  who  have  settled 
themselves  to  the  business  of  writing  with  any 
high  or  serious  aim.  Hawthorne  as  a  brooding 
spirit  has  had  no  successor  among  our  fiction- 
ists.  Our  work  has  been  chiefly  tentative,  and 
all  too  often  the  experiments  have  been  made 
with  an  eye  on  the  publisher's  barometer.  Lit 
erary  gossip  is  heavy  with  reports  of  record- 
breaking  rapidity  of  composition.  A  writer 
who  can  dictate  is  the  envy  of  an  adoring  circle; 
another  who  "never  revises"  arouses  even 
more  poignant  despair.  The  laborious  Balzac 
[116] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

tearing  his  proofs  to  pieces  seems  only  a  dingy 
and  pitiable  figure.  Nobody  knows  the  differ 
ence,  and  what's  a  well-turned  sentence  more 
or  less  ?  I  saw  recently  a  newspaper  editorial 
commenting  derisively  on  a  novelist's  confes 
sion  that  he  was  capable  of  only  a  thousand 
words  a  day,  the  point  being  that  the  average 
newspaper  writer  triples  this  output  without 
fatigue.  Newcomers  in  the  field  can  hardly 
fail  to  be  impressed  by  these  rumors  of  novels 
knocked  off  in  a  month  or  three  months,  for 
which  astonishing  sums  have  been  paid  by 
generous  magazine  editors.  We  shall  have  better 
fiction  as  soon  as  ambitious  writers  realize 
that  novel-writing  is  a  high  calling,  and  that 
success  is  to  be  won  only  by  those  who  are 
willing  to  serve  seven  and  yet  seven  other  years 
in  the  hope  of  winning  "the  crown  of  time." 

In  his  happy  characterization  of  Turgenieff 
and  his  relation  to  the  younger  French  school 
of  realists,  Mr.  James  speaks  of  the  "great 
back-garden  of  his  Slav  imagination  and  his 
Germanic  culture,  into  which  the  door  con 
stantly  stood  open,  and  the  grandsons  of  Bal 
zac  were  not,  I  think,  particularly  free  to  ac- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

company  him."  I  am  further  indebted  to  Mr. 
James  for  certain  words  uttered  by  M.  Renan 
of  the  big  Russian:  "His  conscience  was  not 
that  of  an  individual  to  whom  nature  had  been 
more  or  less  generous;  it  was  in  some  sort  the 
conscience  of  a  people.  Before  he  was  born 
he  had  lived  for  thousands  of  years;  infinite 
successions  of  reveries  had  amassed  them 
selves  in  the  depths  of  his  heart.  No  man  has 
been  as  much  as  he  the  incarnation  of  a  whole 
race:  generations  of  ancestors,  lost  in  the  sleep 
of  centuries,  speechless,  came  through  him  to 
life  and  utterance." 

I  make  no  apology  for  thrusting  my  tin 
dipper  again  into  Mr.  James's  bubbling  well 
for  an  anecdote  of  Flaubert,  derived  from  Ed- 
mond  de  Goncourt.  Flaubert  was  missed  one 
fine  afternoon  in  a  house  where  he  and  De 
Goncourt  were  guests,  and  was  found  to  have 
undressed  and  gone  to  bed  to  think! 

I  shall  not  give  comfort  to  the  enemy  by 
any  admission  that  our  novelists  lack  culture 
in  the  sense  that  TurgeniefF  and  the  great 
French  masters  possessed  it.  A  matter  of  which 
I  may  complain  with  more  propriety  is  their 

[118] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

lack  of  "information  "  (and  I  hope  this  term 
is  sufficiently  delicate)  touching  the  tasks  and 
aims  of  America.  We  have  been  deluged  with 
"big"  novels  that  are  "big"  only  in  the  pub 
lishers'  advertisements.  New  York  has  lately 
been  the  scene  of  many  novels,  but  the  New 
York  adumbrated  in  most  of  them  is  only  the 
metropolis  as  exposed  to  the  awed  gaze  of  pro 
vincial  tourists  from  the  rubber-neck  wagon. 
Sex,  lately  discovered  for  exploitation,  has  re 
sulted  only  in  "arrangements"  of  garbage  in 
pink  and  yellow,  lightly  sprinkled  with  musk. 
As  Rosinante  stumbles  over  the  range  I  am 
disposed  to  offer  a  few  suggestions  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  may  ask  where,  then, 
lies  the  material  about  which  our  novelists 
are  so  deficient  in  "information."  No  strong 
hand  has  yet  been  laid  upon  our  industrial  life. 
It  has  been  pecked  at  and  trifled  with,  but 
never  treated  with  breadth  or  fulness.  Here 
we  have  probably  the  most  striking  social  con 
trasts  the  world  has  ever  seen;  racial  mixtures  of 
bewildering  complexity,  the  whole  flung  against 
impressive  backgrounds  and  lighted  from  a 
thousand  angles.  Pennsylvania  is  only  slightly 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

"spotted"  on  the  literary  map,  and  yet  between 
Philadelphia  and  Pittsburgh,  nearly  every  pos 
sible  phase  and  condition  of  life  is  represented. 
Great  passions  are  at  work  in  the  fiery  aisles  of 
the  steel  mills  that  would  have  kindled  Dostoi- 
efsky's  imagination.  A  pillar  of  cloud  by  day 
and  of  fire  by  night  marks  a  limitless  field  for 
the  earnest  fictionist.  A  Balzac  would  find 
innumerable  subjects  awaiting  him  in  the  streets 
of  Wilkesbarre ! 

At  this  point  I  must  bemoan  the  ill-fortune 
that  has  carried  so  many  American  fiction 
writers  to  foreign  shores.  If  Hawthorne  had 
never  seen  Italy,  but  had  clung  to  Salem,  I 
am  disposed  to  think  American  literature  would 
be  the  richer.  If  fate  had  not  borne  Mr. 
Howells  to  Venice,  but  had  posted  him  on  the 
Ohio  during  the  mighty  struggle  of  the  '6o's, 
and  if  Mr.  James  had  been  stationed  at  Chi 
cago,  close  to  the  deep  currents  of  national 
feeling,  what  a  monumental  library  of  vital 
fiction  they  might  have  given  us  !  If  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton's  splendid  gifts  had  been  consecrated  to 
the  service  of  Pittsburgh  rather  than  New 
York  and  Paris,  how  much  greater  might  be 
our  debt  to  her ! 

[120] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

Business  in  itself  is  not  interesting;  business 
as  it  reacts  upon  character  is  immensely  in 
teresting.  Mineral  paint  has  proved  to  be  an 
excellent  preservative  for  The  Rise  of  Silas 
Laphaniy  which  remains  our  best  novel  of  busi 
ness.  But  if  paint  may  be  turned  to  account, 
why  not  cotton,  wool,  and  the  rest  of  the  trade 
catalogue,  every  item  with  its  own  distinct 
genesis  ?  In  The  Turmoil  Mr.  Tarkington  staged, 
under  a  fitting  canopy  of  factory  smoke,  a  sig 
nificant  drama  of  the  conflict  between  idealism 
and  materialism. 

Turning  to  our  preoccupation  with  politics, 
we  find  another  field  that  is  all  but  fallow. 
Few  novels  of  any  real  dignity  may  be  ten 
dered  as  exhibits  in  this  department,  and  these 
are  in  a  sense  local — the  comprehensive,  the 
deeply  searching,  has  yet  to  be  done.  Mr. 
Churchill's  Coniston,  and  Mr.  Brand  Whitlock's 
The  Thirteenth  District  are  the  happiest  experi 
ments  I  recall,  though  possibly  there  are  others 
of  equal  importance.  Yet  politics  is  not  only  a 
matter  of  constant  discussion  in  every  quarter, 
but  through  and  by  politics  many  thousands 
solve  the  problem  of  existence.  Alone  of  great 
national  capitals  Washington  has  never  been 

[121] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

made  the  scene  of  a  novel  of  distinction.  Years 
ago  we  had  Mrs.  Burnett's  Through  One  Admin 
istration,  but  it  failed  to  establish  itself  as  a 
classic.  George  Meredith  would  have  found 
much  in  Washington  life  upon  which  to  exercise 
his  ironic  powers. 

With  all  our  romantic  longings  it  is  little 
short  of  amazing  that  we  are  not  more  fecund 
in  schemes  for  romantic  drama  and  fiction. 
The  stage,  not  to  say  the  market,  waits;  but 
the  settings  are  dingy  from  much  use  and  the 
characters  in  threadbare  costumes  strut  forth 
to  speak  old  familiar  lines.  Again,  there  is  an 
old  superstition  that  we  are  a  humorous  people, 
and  yet  humor  is  curiously  absent  from  recent 
fiction.  "O.  Henry"  knew  the  way  to  the  foun 
tain  of  laughter,  but  contented  himself  with 
the  shorter  form;  Huckleberry  Finn  seems  des 
tined  to  stand  as  our  nearest  approach  to  a 
novel  of  typical  humor.  We  have  had  David 
Harums  and  Mrs.  Wiggses  a-plenty — kindly 
philosophers,  often  drawn  with  skill — but  the 
results  are  character  sketches,  not  novels. 


[122] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

III 

It  is  impossible  in  a  general  view  of  our  fic 
tion  to  dissociate  the  novel  from  the  short 
story,  which,  in  a  way,  has  sapped  its  vitality. 
An  astonishing  number  of  short  stories  have 
shown  a  grasp  of  the  movement,  energy,  and 
color  of  American  life,  but  writers  who  have 
succeeded  in  this  field  have  seemed  incapable 
of  longer  flight.  And  the  originality  possessed 
by  a  great  number  of  short-story  writers  seems 
to  be  shared  only  meagrely  by  those  who  ex 
periment  with  the  novel.  When  some  venture 
some  Martian  explores  the  Library  of  Congress 
it  may  be  that  in  the  short-story  division  he  will 
find  the  surest  key  to  what  American  life  has 
been.  There  are  few  American  novels  of  any 
period  that  can  tip  the  scale  against  the  twenty 
best  American  short  stories,  chosen  for  sincerity 
and  workmanship.  It  would  seem  that  our  crea 
tive  talent  is  facile  and  true  in  miniature  studies, 
but  shrinks  from  an  ampler  canvas  and  a  broad 
er  brush.  Frank  Norris's  The  Pit  and  The  Octo 
pus  continue  to  command  respect  from  the  fact 
that  he  had  a  panoramic  sense  that  led  him  to 
[  123  ] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

exercise  his  fine  talents  upon  a  great  and  im 
portant  theme. 

We  have  had,  to  be  sure,  many  examples 
of  the  business  and  political  novel,  but  prac 
tically  all  of  them  have  been  struck  from  the 
same  die.  A  "big"  politician  or  a  "big"  man  of 
business,  his  daughter,  and  a  lover  who  brazenly 
sets  himself  up  to  correct  the  morals  of  the 
powerful  parent,  is  a  popular  device.  Young 
love  must  suffer,  but  it  must  not  meet  with 
frustration.  In  these  experiments  (if  anything 
so  rigidly  prescribed  may  be  said  to  contain 
any  element  of  experiment)  a  little  realism  is 
sweetened  with  much  romance.  In  the  same 
way  the  quasi-historical  novel  for  years  fol 
lowed  a  stereotyped  formula:  the  lover  was 
preferably  a  Northern  spy  within  the  Southern 
lines;  the  heroine,  a  daughter  of  the  tradition 
al  aristocratic  Southern  family.  Her  shudder- 
some  ride  to  seek  General  Lee's  pardon  for 
the  unfortunate  officer  condemned  to  be  shot 
at  daybreak  was  as  inevitable  as  measles. 
The  geography  might  be  reversed  occasionally 
to  give  a  Northern  girl  a  chance,  but  in  any 
event  her  brother's  animosity  toward  the  hero 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

was  always  a  pleasing  factor.  Another  ancient 
formula  lately  revived  with  slight  variations 
gives  us  a  shaggy,  elemental  man  brought  by 
shipwreck  or  other  means  into  contact  with 
gentle  womanhood.  In  his  play  The  Great  Divide 
William  Vaughn  Moody  invested  this  device 
with  dignity  and  power,  but  it  would  be  in 
teresting  to  see  what  trick  might  be  performed 
with  the  same  cards  if  the  transformed  hero 
should  finally  take  his  departure  for  the  bright 
boulevards,  while  the  heroine  seized  his  bow 
and  arrow  and  turned  joyfully  to  the  wilder 
ness. 

When  our  writers  cease  their  futile  experi 
menting  and  imitating,  and  wake  up  to  the 
possibilities  of  American  material  we  shall 
have  fewer  complaints  of  the  impotence  of  the 
American  novel.  We  are  just  a  little  impatient 
of  the  holding  of  the  mirror  up  to  nature,  but 
nevertheless  we  do  not  like  to  be  fooled 
all  the  time.  And  no  one  is  quicker  than  an 
American  to  "get  down  to  brass  tacks,"  when 
he  realizes  that  he  must  come  to  it.  Realism 
is  the  natural  medium  through  which  a  democ 
racy  may  "register"  (to  borrow  a  term  from 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

the  screen  drama)  its  changing  emotions,  its 
hopes  and  failures.  We  are  willing  to  take  our 
recreations  in  imaginary  kingdoms,  but  we 
are  blessed  with  a  healthy  curiosity  as  to  what 
really  is  happening  among  our  teeming  mil 
lions,  and  are  not  so  blind  as  our  foreign  critics 
and  the  croakers  at  home  would  have  us  think 
as  to  what  we  do  and  feel  and  believe.  But 
the  realists  must  play  the  game  straight.  They 
must  paint  the  wart  on  the  sitter's  nose — 
though  he  refuse  to  pay  for  the  portrait !  Half 
hearted  dallying  and  sidling  and  compromis 
ing  are  not  getting  us  anywhere.  The  flimsiest 
romance  is  preferable  to  dishonest  realism. 
It  is  the  meretricious  stuff  in  the  guise  of  real 
ism  that  we  are  all  anxious  to  delete  from  the 
catalogues. 

Having  thus,  I  hope,  appeased  the  realists, 
who  are  an  exacting  phalanx,  difficult  to  satisfy, 
I  feel  that  it  is  only  right,  just,  and  proper  to 
rally  for  a  moment  the  scampering  hosts  of 
the  romanticists.  It  is  deplorable  that  Realism 
should  be  so  roused  to  bloodthirstiness  by  any 
intrusion  upon  the  landscape  of  Romanticism's 
dainty  frocks  and  fluttering  ribbons.  Before 

fl261 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

Realism  was,  Romance  ruled  in  many  king 
doms.  If  Romance  had  not  been,  Realism  would 
not  be.  Let  the  Cossacks  keep  to  their  side  of 
the  river  and  behave  like  gentlemen !  Others 
have  said  it  who  spoke  with  authority,  and  I 
shall  not  scruple  to  repeat  that  the  story  for 
the  story's  sake  is  a  perfectly  decent,  honor 
able,  and  praiseworthy  thing.  It  is  as  old  as 
human  nature,  and  the  desire  for  it  will  not 
perish  till  man  has  been  recreated.  Neither 
much  argument  about  it,  nor  the  limning 
against  the  gray  Russian  sky-line  of  the  august 
figures  of  Dostoiefsky,  Tolstoy,  and  Turgenieff 
will  change  the  faith  of  the  many  who  seek  in 
fiction  cheer  and  recreation. 

Again,  I  beg,  let  us  preserve  a  good  temper 
as  we  ponder  these  matters.  More  and  more 
we  shall  have  true  realism;  but  more  and  more 
let  us  hope  for  the  true  romance.  Stevenson's 
familiar  contributions  to  the  discussion  are  in 
the  best  vein  of  the  cause  he  espouses;  and  al 
though  a  New  York  newspaper  referred  to 
him  the  other  day  as  the  "Caledonian  poseur," 
his  lantern-bearers  continue  to  signal  merrily 
from  the  heights  and  are  not  to  be  confused 

[127] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

with  Realism's  switch  targets  in  the  railroad 
yards  in  the  valley.  The  lords  of  the  high  pale 
brow  in  classrooms  and  on  the  critical  dais  are 
much  too  contemptuous  of  Romance.  Romance 
we  must  have,  to  the  end  of  time,  no  matter 
how  nobly  Realism  may  achieve.  With  our  pre 
disposition  as  a  healthy-minded  and  cheerful 
people  toward  tales  of  the  night-rider  and  the 
scratch  of  the  whip  butt  on  the  inn  door,  it  is 
unfair  to  slap  Romance  on  the  wrist  and  post 
her  off  to  bed  like  a  naughty  stepchild.  Even 
the  stern  brow  of  the  realist  must  relax  at  times. 
Many  people  of  discernment  found  pleasure 
in  our  Richard  Carvels,  Janice  Merediths,  and 
Hugh  Wynnes.  Miss  Johnston's  To  Have  and 
to  Hold  and  Lewis  Rand  are  books  one  may 
enjoy  without  shame.  The  stickler  for  style 
need  not  be  scornful  of  Mrs.  Catherwood's 
Lazarre  and  The  Romance  of  Dollard.  Out  of 
Chicago  came  Mr.  Henry  Fuller's  charming 
exotic,  The  Chevalier  of  Piensieri-Fani.  Mon 
sieur  Beaucaire  and  Miss  Sherwood's  Daphne 
proved  a  while  ago  that  all  the  cherries  have 
not  been  shaken  from  the  tree — only  the  trees 
in  these  cases,  unfortunately,  were  not  Amer- 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

ican.  Surely  one  of  these  days  a  new  Peter  Pan 
will  fly  over  an  American  greenwood.  I  should 
bless  the  hand  that  pressed  upon  me  for  read 
ing  to-night  so  diverting  a  skit  as  Mr.  Viele's 
The  Inn  of  the  Silver  Moon.  I  shall  not  even 
pause  to  argue  with  those  who  are  plucking 
my  coat-tails  and  whispering  that  these  are 
mere  trifles,  too  frivolous  to  be  mentioned 
when  the  novel  is  the  regular  order  of  the  con 
ference.  I  am  looking  along  the  shelf  for  Stock 
ton,  the  fanciful  and  whimsical.  How  pleasant 
it  would  be  to  meet  Mrs.  Leeks  and  Mrs.  Ale- 
shine  again,  or  to  lodge  for  a  day  at  another 
Squirrel  Inn.  And  yet  (O  fame,  thou  fickle 
one !)  when  I  asked  a  young  lady  the  other 
day  if  she  knew  Stockton,  she  replied  with 
emphasis  that  she  did  not;  that  "that  old 
quaint  stuff"  doesn't  go  any  more !" 

Having  handed  Realism  a  ticket  to  Pitts 
burgh  with  generous  stop-over  privileges,  I 
regret  that  I  am  unable  to  point  Romance 
to  any  such  promising  terminus.  But  the  realm 
of  Romance  is  extra-territorial;  Realism  alone 
demands  the  surveyor's  certificate  and  ab 
stracts  of  title.  An  Irish  poet  once  assured  me 
[  129] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

that  fairies  are  to  be  found  everywhere,  and 
surely  somewhere  between  Moosehead  Lake 
and  Puget  Sound  some  lad  is  piping  lustily 
on  a  new  silver  whistle  where  the  deer  come 
down  to  drink. 

IV 

It  is  the  fashion  to  attribute  to  the  auto 
mobile  and  the  motion-picture  all  social  phe 
nomena  not  otherwise  accounted  for.  The 
former  has  undoubtedly  increased  our  national 
restlessness,  and  it  has  robbed  the  evening 
lamp  of  its  cosey  bookish  intimacy.  The  screen- 
drama  makes  possible  the  "reading"  of  a  story 
with  the  minimum  amount  of  effort.  A  genera 
tion  bred  on  the  "movies"  will  be  impatient 
of  the  tedious  methods  of  writers  who  cannot 
transform  character  by  a  click  of  the  camera, 
but  require  at  least  four  hundred  pages  to  turn 
the  trick.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  of  the 
quasi-historical  novels  that  flourished  fifteen 
and  twenty  years  ago  and  broke  a  succession 
of  best-selling  records  would  meet  with  any 
thing  approximating  the  same  amiable  re 
ception  if  launched  to-day.  A  trained  scenario- 

[130] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

writer,  unembarrassed  by  literary  standards  and 
intent  upon  nothing  but  action,  can  beat  the 
melodramatic  novelist  at  his  own  game  every 
time.  A  copyright  novel  of  adventure  cannot 
compete  with  the  same  story  at  ten  cents  or 
a  quarter  as  presented  in  the  epileptic  drama, 
where  it  lays  no  burden  upon  the  beholder's 
visualizing  sense.  The  resources  of  the  screen 
for  creating  thrills  are  inexhaustible;  it  draws 
upon  the  heavens  above,  the  earth  beneath, 
and  the  waters  under  the  earth;  and  as  nothing 
that  can  be  pictured  can  be  untrue — or  so  the 
confiding  "movie"  patron,  unfamiliar  with  the 
tricks  of  the  business,  believes — the  screen  has 
also  the  great  advantage  of  plausibility. 

The  silent  drama  may  therefore  exercise  a 
beneficent  influence,  if  it  shall  prove  to  have 
shunted  into  a  new  channel  of  publication 
great  numbers  of  stories  whose  justification 
between  covers  was  always  debatable.  Already 
many  novels  of  this  type  have  been  resurrected 
by  the  industrious  screen  producers.  If,  after 
the  long  list  has  been  exhausted,  we  shall  be 
spared  the  "novelization"  of  screen  scenarios 
in  the  fashion  of  the  novelized  play,  we  shall 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

be  rid  of  some  of  the  debris  that  has  handi 
capped  the  novelists  who  have  meekly  asked 
to  be  taken  seriously. 

The  fiction  magazines  also  have  cut  into  the 
sale  of  ephemeral  novels.  For  the  price  of  one 
novel  the  uncritical  reader  may  fortify  him 
self  with  enough  reading  matter  to  keep  him 
diverted  for  a  month.  Nowadays  the  hurrying 
citizen  approaches  the  magazine  counter  in  much 
the  same  spirit  in  which  he  attacks  the  help- 
yourself  lunch-trough — grabs  what  he  likes  and 
retires  for  hurried  consumption.  It  must,  how 
ever,  be  said  for  the  much-execrated  magazine 
editors  that  with  all  their  faults  and  defaults 
they  are  at  least  alive  to  the  importance  and 
value  of  American  material.  They  discovered 
O.  Henry,  now  recognized  as  a  writer  of  signifi 
cance.  I  should  like  to  scribble  a  marginal  note 
at  this  point  to  the  effect  that  writers  who  are 
praised  for  style,  those  who  are  able  to  employ 
otiose,  meticulous^  and  ineluctable  with  awe-in 
spiring  inadvertence  in  tales  of  morbid  intro 
spection,  are  not  usually  those  who  are  deeply 
learned  in  the  ways  and  manners  of  that  con 
siderable  body  of  our  people  who  are  obliged  to 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

work  for  a  living.  We  must  avoid  snobbishness 
in  our  speculations  as  to  the  available  ingre 
dients  from  which  American  fiction  must  be 
made.  Baseball  players,  vaudeville  and  motion- 
picture  performers,  ladies  employed  as  com 
mercial  travellers,  and  Potash  and  Perlmutter, 
are  all  legitimate  subjects  for  the  fictionist, 
and  our  millions  undoubtedly  prefer  just  now 
to  view  them  humorously  or  romantically. 


In  our  righteous  awakening  to  the  serious 
plight  to  which  our  fiction  has  come  it  is  not 
necessary,  nor  is  it  becoming,  to  point  the  slow 
unmoving  finger  of  scorn  at  those  benighted 
but  well-meaning  folk  who  in  times  past  did 
what  they  could  toward  fashioning  an  Amer 
ican  literature.  We  all  see  their  errors  now; 
we  deplore  their  stupidity,  we  wish  they  had 
been  quite  different;  but  why  drag  their  bones 
from  the  grave  for  defilement  ?  Cooper  and 
Irving  meant  well;  there  are  still  misguided 
souls  who  find  pleasure  in  them.  It  was  not 
Hawthorne's  fault  that  he  so  bungled  The 

[133] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

Scarlet  Letter,  nor  Poe's  that  he  frittered  away 
his  time  inventing  the  detective  story.  Our 
deep  contrition  must  not  betray  us  into  hard 
ness  of  heart  toward  those  unconscious  sinners, 
who  cooled  their  tea  in  the  saucer  and  never 
heard  of  a  samovar ! 

There  are  American  novelists  whose  por 
traits  I  refuse  to  turn  to  the  wall.  Marion  Craw 
ford  had  very  definite  ideas,  which  he  set  forth 
in  a  most  entertaining  essay,  as  to  what  the 
novel  should  be,  and  he  followed  his  formula 
with  happy  results.  His  Saracinesca  still  seems 
to  me  a  fine  romance.  There  was  some  marrow 
in  the  bones  of  E.  W.  Howe's  Story  of  a  Coun 
try  Town.  I  can  remember  when  Miss  Woolson 
was  highly  regarded  as  a  writer,  and  when 
Miss  Howard's  amusing  One  Summer  seemed 
not  an  ignoble  thing.  F.  J.  Stimson,  Thomas 
Nelson  Page,  Arthur  Sherburne  Hardy,  Miss 
Murfree,  Mary  Hallock  Foote,  T.  B.  Aldrich, 
T.  R.  Sullivan,  H.  C.  Bunner,  Robert  Grant, 
and  Harold  Frederic  all  labored  sincerely  for 
the  cause  of  American  fiction.  F.  Hopkinson 
Smith  told  a  good  story  and  told  it  like  a  gentle 
man.  Mr.  Cable's  right  to  a  place  in  the  front 

[134] 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

rank  of  American  novelists  is  not,  I  believe, 
questioned  in  any  survey;  if  The  Grandissimes 
and  Old  Creole  Days  had  been  written  in  France, 
he  would  probably  be  pointed  to  as  an  author 
well  worthy  of  American  emulation. 

No  doubt  this  list  might  be  considerably 
expanded,  as  I  am  drawing  from  memory, 
and  merely  suggesting  writers  whose  perform 
ances  in  most  instances  synchronize  with  my 
first  reading  of  American  novels.  I  do  not  be 
lieve  we  are  helping  our  case  materially  by 
ignoring  these  writers  as  though  they  were  a 
lot  of  poor  relations  whenever  a  foreign  critic 
turns  his  condescending  gaze  in  our  direction. 

VI 

It  is  a  hopeful  sign  that  we  now  produce 
one  or  two,  or  maybe  three,  good  novels  a  year. 
The  number  is  bound  to  increase  as  our  young 
writers  of  ambition  realize  that  technic  and 
facility  are  not  the  only  essentials  of  success, 
but  that  they  must  burrow  into  life — honey 
comb  it  until  their  explorations  carry  them 
to  the  core  of  it.  There  are  novels  that  are  half 

[135] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

good;  some  are  disfigured  by  wabbly  charac 
terizations;  or  the  patience  necessary  to  a  proper 
development  of  the  theme  is  lacking.  However, 
sincerity  and  an  appreciation  of  the  highest 
function  of  the  novel  as  a  medium  for  inter 
preting  life  are  not  so  rare  as  the  critics  would 
have  us  believe. 

I  have  never  subscribed  to  the  idea  that 
the  sun  of  American  literature  rises  in  Indiana 
and  sets  in  Kansas.  We  have  had  much  pro 
vincial  fiction,  and  the  monotony  of  our  out 
put  would  be  happily  varied  by  attempts  at 
something  of  national  scope.  It  is  not  to  dis 
parage  the  small  picture  that  I  suggest  for 
experiment  the  broadly  panoramic — "A  Hugo 
flare  against  the  night" — but  because  the  novel 
as  we  practise  it  seems  so  pitifully  small  in 
contrast  with  the  available  material.  I  am 
aware,  of  course,  that  a  hundred  pages  are  as 
good  as  a  thousand  if  the  breath  of  life  is  in 
them.  Flaubert,  says  Mr.  James,  made  things 
big. 

We  must  escape  from  this  carving  of  cherry 
stones,  this  contentment  with  the  day  of  little 
ness,  this  use  of  the  novel  as  a  plaything  where 


OPEN  SEASON  FOR  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

it  pretends  to  be  something  else.  And  it  occurs 
to  me  at  this  juncture  that  I  might  have  saved 
myself  a  considerable  expenditure  of  ink  by 
stating  in  the  first  place  that  what  the  Amer 
ican  novel  really  needs  is  a  Walt  Whitman 
to  fling  a  barbaric  yawp  from  the  crest  of  the 
Alleghanies  and  proclaim  a  new  freedom.  For 
what  I  have  been  trying  to  say  comes  down 
to  this:  that  we  shall  not  greatly  serve  our 
selves  or  the  world's  literature  by  attempts  to 
Russianize,  or  Gallicize,  or  Anglicize  our  fiction, 
but  that  we  must  strive  more  earnestly  to 
Americanize  it — to  make  it  express  with  all 
the  art  we  may  command  the  life  we  are  liv 
ing  and  that  pretty  tangible  something  that 
we  call  the  American  spirit. 

The  bright  angels  of  letters  never  appear  in 
answer  to  prayer;  they  come  out  of  nowhere 
and  knock  at  unwatched  gates.  But  the  wailing 
of  jeremiads  before  the  high  altar  is  not  cal 
culated  to  soften  the  hearts  of  the  gods  who 
hand  down  genius  from  the  skies.  It  is  related 
that  a  clerk  in  the  patent  office  asked  to  be 
assigned  to  a  post  in  some  other  department 
on  the  ground  that  practically  everything  had 

[137] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

been  invented  and  he  wanted  to  change  before 
he  lost  his  job.  That  was  in  1833. 

Courage,  comrade !  The  songs  have  not  all 
been  written  nor  the  tales  all  told. 


THE  CHURCH  FOR  HONEST  SINNERS 

THE  young  man  who  greeted  me  cheer 
fully  in  the  lobby  of  the  hotel  in  War- 
burton,  my  native  town,  and  handed 
me  a  card  setting  forth  the  hours  of  services 
at  St.  John's  Church,  evidently  assumed  that 
I  was  a  commercial  traveller.  I  was  in  no  wise 
offended  by  his  mistake,  as  I  sincerely  admire 
the  heralds  of  prosperity  and  sit  with  them  at 
meat  whenever  possible.  I  am  a  neurologist  by 
profession,  but  write  occasionally,  and  was 
engaged  just  then  in  gathering  material  for  a 
magazine  article  on  occupational  diseases.  A 
friend  in  the  Department  of  Labor  had  sug 
gested  Warburton  as  a  likely  hunting-ground, 
as  children  employed  there  in  a  match-factory 
were  constantly  being  poisoned,  and  a  paint- 
factory  also  was  working  dire  injury  to  its 
employees. 

"I'm  afraid,"  I  replied  to  the  engaging  young 
representative  of  St.  John's  Men's  League, 
"that  my  religious  views  wouldn't  be  tolerated 
at  St.  John's.  But  I  thank  you,  just  the  same." 

[139] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

I  had  been  baptized  in  St.  John's  and  re 
membered  it  well  from  my  youth.  On  my  way 
up-town  from  the  station  I  had  noted  its  hand 
some  new  edifice  of  impeccable  Gothic. 

"We  have  the  best  music  in  town,  and  our 
minister  is  a  live  wire.  He  knows  how  to  preach 
to  men — he's  cut  big  slices  out  of  the  other 
churches." 

"Gives  the  anxious  sinner  a  clean  bill  of 
health,  does  he?" 

"Well,  most  of  the  leading  citizens  go  there 
now,"  he  answered,  politely  ignoring  my  un 
called-for  irony.  "Men  who  never  went  to 
church  before;  the  men  who  do  things  in  War- 
burton.  Our  minister's  the  best  preacher  in  the 
diocese.  His  subject  this  morning  is  'The  Prod 
igal  Son.'  " 

I  felt  guiltily  that  the  topic  might  have  been 
chosen  providentially  to  mark  my  return,  and 
it  occurred  to  me  that  this  might  be  a  good 
chance  to  see  Warburton  in  its  best  bib  and 
tucker.  However,  having  planned  to  spend  the 
morning  in  the  slum  which  the  town  had  ac 
quired  with  its  prosperity,  I  hardened  my  heart 
against  the  young  solicitor,  in  spite  of  his 


THE  CHURCH  FOR  HONEST  SINNERS 

unobtrusive  and  courteous  manner  of  extending 
the  invitation. 

"You  represent  a  saint's  church,"  I  re 
marked,  glancing  at  the  card.  "I  travel  a  good 
deal  and  I  haven't  found  a  church  specially 
designed  for  sinners  like  me.  I'm  uncomfort 
able  among  the  saints.  I'm  not  quarrelling 
with  your  church  or  its  name,  but  I've  long 
had  a  feeling  that  our  church  nomenclature 
needs  revision.  Still,  that's  a  personal  matter. 
You've  done  your  duty  by  me,  and  I'd  be  glad 
to  come  if  I  didn't  have  another  engagement." 

The  pages  of  a  Chicago  morning  newspaper 
that  lay  across  my  knees  probably  persuaded 
him  that  I  was  lying.  However,  after  a  mo 
ment's  hesitation  he  sat  down  beside  me. 

"That's  funny,  what  you  said  about  a  church 
for  sinners — but  we  have  one  right  here  in 
Warburton;  odd  you  never  heard  of  it !  It  was 
written  up  in  the  newspapers  a  good  deal.  It's 
just  across  the  street  from  St.  John's  on  Water 
Street." 

I  recalled  now  that  I  had  seen  a  strange 
church  in  my  walk  to  the  hotel,  but  the  new 
St.  John's  had  so  absorbed  my  attention  that 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

I  had  passed  it  with  only  a  glance.  It  came 
back  to  me  that  it  was  a  white  wooden  struc 
ture,  and  that  boards  were  nailed  across  its 
pillared  portico  as  though  to  shut  out  the 
public  while  repairs  were  in  progress. 

"Saints  excluded,  sinners  only  need  apply?" 

He  nodded,  and  looked  at  me  queerly,  as 
though,  now  that  I  had  broached  the  matter, 
he  considered  the  advisability  of  telling  me 
more.  It  was  ten  o'clock  and  half  a  dozen 
church-bells  clanged  importunately  as  a  back 
ground  for  the  Adeste  Fideles  rung  from  St. 
John's  chimes. 

"The  Church  For  Honest  Sinners,"  might 
suit  you,  only  it's  closed — closed  for  good,  I 
guess,"  he  remarked,  again  scrutinizing  me 
closely. 

He  played  nervously  with  a  pack  of  cards 
similar  to  the  one  with  which  he  had  intro 
duced  himself.  Other  men,  quite  as  unmistak 
ably  transients  as  I,  were  lounging  down  from 
breakfast,  settling  themselves  to  their  news 
papers,  or  seeking  the  barber-shop.  Something 
in  my  attitude  toward  the  church  for  which  he 
was  seeking  worshippers  seemed  to  arrest  him. 


THE  CHURCH  FOR  HONEST  SINNERS 

He  was  a  handsome,  clear-eyed,  wholesome- 
looking  young  fellow,  whose  life  had  doubtless 
been  well  sheltered  from  evil;  there  was  some 
thing  refreshingly  naive  about  him.  I  liked 
his  straightforward  manner  of  appealing  to 
strangers;  a  bank  teller,  perhaps,  or  maybe 
a  clerk  in  the  office  of  one  of  the  manufactur 
ing  companies  whose  indifference  to  the  wel 
fare  of  their  laborers  I  had  come  to  investigate. 
Not  the  most  grateful  of  tasks,  this  of  passing 
church  advertisements  about  in  hotel  lobbies 
on  Sunday  mornings.  It  requires  courage,  true 
manliness.  My  heart  warmed  to  him  as  I  saw 
a  number  of  men  eying  us  from  the  cigar- 
stand,  evidently  amused  that  the  young  fellow 
had  cornered  me.  A  member  of  the  group, 
a  stout  gentleman  in  checks,  held  one  of  the 
cards  in  his  hand  and  covertly  pointed  with 
it  in  our  direction. 

"If  there's  a  story  about  the  sinners'  church 
I'd  like  to  hear  it,"  I  remarked  encouragingly. 
"It  seemed  to  be  closed — suppose  they're  en 
larging  it  to  accommodate  the  rush." 

"Well,  no;  hardly  that,"  he  replied  soberly. 
"It  was  built  as  an  independent  scheme — none 

[143] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 


of  the   denominations  would   stand   for  it  of 


course." 


"Why  the 'of  course'?" 

"Well,"  he  smiled,  "the  idea  of  sin  isn't 
exactly  popular,  is  it  ?  And  besides  everybody 
isn't  wicked;  there  are  plenty  of  good  people. 
There's  good  in  all  men,"  he  added,  as  though 
quoting. 

"I  can't  quarrel  with  that.  But  how  about 
this  Church  For  Honest  Sinners  ?  Tell  me  the 
story." 

"Well,  it's  a  queer  sort  of  story,  and  as  you're 
a  stranger  and  I'm  not  likely  to  meet  you  again, 
I'll  tell  you  all  I  know.  It  was  built  by  a 
woman."  He  crossed  his  legs  and  looked  at 
the  clock.  "She  was  rich  as  riches  go  in  a  town 
like  this.  And  she  was  different  from  other 
people.  She  was  left  a  widow  with  about  a  hun 
dred  thousand  dollars,  and  she  set  apart  half 
of  it  to  use  in  helping  others.  She  wouldn't  do 
it  through  societies  or  churches;  she  did  it  all 
herself.  She  wasn't  very  religious — not  the  way 
we  use  the  word — not  the  usual  sort  of  church 
woman  who's  zealous  in  guilds  and  societies  and 
enjoys  running  things.  She  wasn't  above  ask- 

[144] 


THE  CHURCH  FOR  HONEST  SINNERS 

ing  the  factory  hands  to  her  house  now  and 
then,  and  was  always  helping  the  under  dog. 
She  was  splendid — the  finest  woman  that  ever 
lived;  but  of  course  people  thought  her  queer." 

"Such  people  are  generally  considered  eccen 
tric,"  I  commented. 

"The  business  men  disliked  her  because 
they  said  she  was  spoiling  the  poor  people  and 
putting  bad  notions  into  their  heads." 

"I  dare  say  they  did  !  I  can  see  that  a  woman 
like  that  would  be  criticised." 

"Then  when  they  tore  down  old  St.  John's 
and  began  building  the  new  church,  she  said 
she'd  build  a  church  after  her  own  ideas.  She 
spent  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  building 
that  church  you  noticed  in  Water  Street  and 
she  called  it  'The  Church  For  Honest  Sinners.' 
She  meant  to  put  a  minister  in  who  had  some 
of  her  ideas  about  religion,  but  right  there 
came  her  first  blow.  As  her  church  wasn't  tied 
up  to  any  of  the  denominations  she  couldn't 
find  a  man  willing  to  take  the  job.  I  sup 
pose  the  real  trouble  was  that  nobody  wanted 
to  mix  up  with  a  scheme  like  that;  it  was  too 
radical;  didn't  seem  exactly  respectable.  It's 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

easy,  I  suppose,  when  there's  a  big  whooping 
crowd — Billy  Sunday  and  that  sort  of  thing — 
and  the  air  is  full  of  emotionalism,  to  get  people 
to  the  mourners'  bench  to  confess  that  they're 
miserable  sinners.  But  you  can  see  for  yourself 
that  it  takes  nerve  to  walk  into  the  door  of  a 
church  that's  for  sinners  only — seems  sort  o* 
foolish ! 

"I  shouldn't  be  telling  you  about  this  if  I 
hadn't  seen  that  you  had  the  same  idea  the 
builder  of  that  church  had:  that  there's  too 
much  of  the  saint  business  and  general  smug 
ness  about  our  churches,  and  that  a  church 
that  frankly  set  out  to  welcome  sinners  would 
play,  so  to  speak,  to  capacity.  You  might  think 
that  all  the  Cains,  Judases,  and  Magdalens 
would  feel  that  here  at  last  was  a  door  of  Chris 
tian  hope  flung  open  for  them.  But  it  doesn't 
work  that  way — at  least  it  didn't  in  this  case. 
I  suppose  there  are  people  in  this  town  right 
now,  all  dressed  up  to  go  to  church,  who've 
broken  all  the  Ten  Commandments  without 
feeling  they  were  sinners;  and  of  course  the 
churches  can't  go  after  sin  the  way  they  used 
to,  with  hell  and  brimstone;  the  people  won't 


THE  CHURCH  FOR   HONEST  SINNERS 

stand  for  it.  You've  been  thinking  that  a  church 
set  apart  for  sinners  would  appeal  to  people 
who've  done  wrong  and  are  sorry  about  it, 
but  it  doesn't;  and  that's  why  that  church  on 
Water  Street's  boarded  up — not  for  repairs, 
as  you  imagined,  but  because  only  one  person 
has  ever  crossed  the  threshold.  It  was  the  idea 
of  the  woman  who  built  it  that  the  door  should 
stand  open  all  the  time,  night  and  day,  and 
the  minister,  if  she  could  have  found  one  to 
take  the  job,  would  have  been  on  the  lookout 
to  help  the  people  who  went  there." 

This  was  rather  staggering.  Perhaps,  I  re 
flected,  it  is  better  after  all  to  suffer  the  goats 
to  pasture,  with  such  demureness  as  they  can 
command,  among  the  sheep. 

"I  suppose,"  I  remarked,  "that  the  founder 
of  the  church  was  satisfied  with  her  experi 
ment — she  hadn't  wholly  wasted  her  money, 
for  she  had  found  the  answers  to  interesting 
questions  as  to  human  nature — the  vanity  of 
rectitude,  the  pride  of  virtue,  the  consolations 
of  hypocrisy." 

He  looked  at  me  questioningly,  with  his 
frank  innocent  eyes,  as  though  estimating  the 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

extent  to  which  he  might  carry  his  confi 
dences. 

"Let  me  say  again  that  I  shouldn't  be  telling 
you  all  this  if  you  didn't  have  her  ideas — and 
without  ever  knowing  her!  She  lived  on  the 
corner  below  the  church,  where  she  could  watch 
the  door.  She  watched  it  for  about  two  years, 
day  and  night,  without  ever  seeing  a  soul  go 
in,  and  people  thought  she'd  lost  her  mind. 
And  then,  one  Sunday  morning  when  the  whole 
town — all  her  old  friends  and  neighbors — were 
bound  for  church,  she  came  out  of  her  house 
alone  and  walked  straight  down  to  that  church 
she  had  built  for  sinners,  and  in  at  the  door. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  rising  quickly,  as  though 
recalling  his  obligations  to  St.  John's  Men's 
League,  "she  was  the  finest  woman  in  town — 
the  best  and  the  noblest  woman  that  ever  lived  ! 
They  found  her  at  noon  lying  dead  in  the 
church.  The  failure  of  her  plan  broke  her  heart; 
and  that  made  it  pretty  hard — for  her  family 
— everybody." 

He  was  fingering  his  cards  nervously,  and  I 
did  not  question  the  sincerity  of  the  emotion 
his  face  betrayed. 


THE  CHURCH  FOR  HONEST  SINNERS 

"It  is  possible,"  I  suggested,  "that  she  had 
grown  morbid  over  some  sin  of  her  own,  and 
had  been  hoping  that  others  would  avail  them 
selves  of  the  hospitality  of  a  church  that  was 
frankly  open  to  sinners..  It  might  have  made 
it  easier  for  her." 

He  smiled  with  a  childlike  innocence  and 
faith. 

"Not  only  not  possible,"  he  caught  me  up, 
with  quick  dignity,  "but  incredible!  She  was 
my  mother." 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN 

POLITICS 

[1916] 

In  our  great  modern  States,  where  the  scale  of  things 
is  so  large,  it  does  seem  as  if  the  remnant  might  be  so  in 
creased  as  to  become  an  actual  power,  even  though  the 
majority  be  unsound. — MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Numbers. 


WHO  governs  America  ? 
The  answer  is  obvious:  we  are  a 
republic,  a  representative  democracy 
enjoying  to  the  utmost  government  of,  for,  and 
by  the  people.\America  is  governed  by  persons 
wemoose,  presumably  on  our  own  initiative,  to 
serve,,  us,  to  make,  execute,  and  interpret  laws 
for  usyAddicted  as  we  are  to  the  joy  of  phrases, 
we  find  in  these  cliches  unfailing  delight. 

Democracy,  ideally  considered,  is  an  affair 
of  the  wisest  and  best.  As  the  privileges  of  the 
ballot  are  generously  extended  to  all,  the  whole 
people  are  invested  with  an  initiative  and  an 
authority  which  it  is  their  duty  to  exercise. 

[150] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

We  assume  that  all  are  proud  of  their  inheri 
tance  of  liberty,  jealoas  of  their  power,  and 
alert  in  performing  the  duties  of  citizenship. 
That  we  are  not  highly  successful  in  realizing 
this  ideal  is  a  matter  that  is  giving  increasing 
concern  to  thoughtful  Americans. 

As  these  words  are  read  thousands  of  candi 
dates  are  before  the  electorate  for  considera 
tion,  and  the  patriotic  citizen  is  presumably 
possessing  himself  of  all  available  information 
regarding  them,  determined  to  vote  only  for 
the  most  desirable.  '[The  parties  have  done  their 
best,  or  worst,  as  we  choose  to  view  the  matter, 
and  it  is  "up  to  the  people"  to  accept  or  re 
ject  those  who  offer  themselves  for  place/ The 
citizen  is  face  to  face  with  the  problem,  Shall 
he  vote  for  candidates  he  knows  to  be  unfit, 
merely  to  preserve  his  regularity,  or  shall  he 
cast  his  ballot  for  the  fittest  men  without  re 
spect  to  the  party  emblems  on  his  ballot  ?  Op 
posed  to  the  conscientious  voter,  and  capable 
of  defeating  his  purpose,  are  agencies  and  in 
fluences  with  which  it  is  well-nigh  impossible 
for  him  to  cope.  The  higher  his  intelligence  and 
the  nobler  his  aim,  the  less  he  is  able  to  reckon 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

with  forces  which  are  stubbornly  determined 
to  nullify  his  vote. 

The  American  voter  is  not  normally  inde 
pendent;  it  is  only  when  there  has  been  some 
marked  affront  to  the  party's  intelligence  or 
moral  sense  that  we  observe  any  display  of 
independence.  Independent  movements  are  al 
ways  reassuring  and  encouraging.  The  revolt 
against  Elaine  in  1884,  the  Gold-Democratic 
movement  in  1896,  were  most  significant;  and 
I  am  disposed  to  give  a  somewhat  similar  value 
to  the  Progressive  movement  of  1912.  But  the 
average  voter  is  a  creature  of  prejudice,  who 
boasts  jauntily  that  he  never  scratches  his 
ticket.  He  follows  his  party  with  dogged  sub 
mission  and  is  more  or  less  honestly  blind  to 
its  faults. 

As  my  views  on  this  subject  are  more  usually 
voiced  by  independents  than  by  partisans,  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  say  that  I  am  a  party 
man,  a  Democrat,  sufficiently  "regular"  to 
vote  with  a  good  conscience  in  primary  elec 
tions.  Living  in  a  State  where  there  is  no  point 
of  rest  in  politics,  where  one  campaign  dove 
tails  into  another,  I  have  for  twenty-five  years 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

been  an  observer  of  political  tendencies  and 
methods.  I  may  say  of  the  two  great  parties, 
as  Ingersoll  remarked  of  the  life  beyond,  "I 
have  friends  in  both  places."  One  of  my  best 
friends  was  a  "boss"  who  served  a  term  in 
prison  for  scratching  a  tally-sheet.  I  am  per 
fectly  familiar  with  the  theories  upon  which 
bossism  is  justified,  the  more  plausible  being 
that  only  by  maintaining  strong  local  organiza 
tions,  that  is  to  say,  Machines,  can  a  party  so 
intrench  itself  as  to  support  effectively  the 
policies  and  reforms  dear  to  the  heart  of  the 
idealist.  And  bosses  do,  indeed,  sometimes  use 
their  power  benevolently,  though  this  happens 
usually  where  they  see  a  chance  to  win  advan 
tage  or  to  allay  popular  clamor. 

It  is  not  of  the  pending  campaign  that  I 
write,  and  any  references  I  make  to  it  are  only 
for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  phases  or  ten 
dencies  that  seem  worthy  of  consideration  at 
a  time  when  public  thought  is  concentrated 
upon  politics.  And  to  give  definite  aim  to  this 
inquiry  I  shall  state  it  in  the  harshest  terms 
possible: 

We,  a  self-governing  people,  permit  our  af- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

fairs  to  be  administered,  very  largely,  by  second- 
rate  men. 

Our  hearts  throb  indignantly  as  we  ponder 
this.  The  types  have  a  queer  look.  Such  an  ac 
cusation  is  an  unpardonable  sin  against  Amer 
ican  institutions — against  an  intelligent,  high- 
minded  citizenry.  It  can,  however,  do  no  harm 
to  view  the  matter  from  various  angles  to  de 
termine  whether  anything  really  may  be  ad 
duced  in  support  of  it. 

II 

In  theory  the  weight  of  the  majority  is  with 
the  fit.  This  is  the  pleasantest  of  ideas,  but  it 
is  not  true.  It  is  not  true  at  least  in  so  great  a 
number  of  contests  as  to  justify  any  virtuous 
complacency  in  the  electorate.  It  is  probably 
no  more  untrue  now  than  in  other  years,  though 
the  cumulative  effect  of  a  long  experience  of 
government  by  the  unfit  is  having  its  effect 
upon  the  nation  in  discouraging  faith  in  that 
important  and  controlling  function  of  govern 
ment  that  has  to  do  with  the  choice  and  elec 
tion  of  candidates.  Only  rarely — and  I  speak 


THE   SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

carefully — do  the  best  men  possible  for  a  given 
office  ever  reach  it.  The  best  men  are  never 
even  considered  for  thousands  of  State,  county, 
and  municipal  elective  offices;  they  do  not; 
offer^  th^mgplvfjjj  either  because  office-holding 
is  distasteful,  or  because  private  business  is 
more  lucrative,  or  because  they  are  aware  of 
no  demand  for  their  services  on  the  part  of 
their  fellow  citizens.fBy  fitness  I  mean  the  com 
petence  produced  by  experience  and  training, 
fortified  with,,  moral  character  and  a  sense  of 
responsibility.  \I  should  say  that  a  fit  man  for 
public  office  is  one  who  in  his  private  affairs 
has  established  a  reputation  for  efficiency  and 
trustworthiness. 

In  assuming  that  a  democracy  like  ours  pre 
supposes  in  the  electorate  a  desire,  no  matter 
how  feeble,  to  intrust  public  affairs  to  men  of 
fitness,  to  first-rate  men,  it  would  seem  that 
with  the  approach  of  every  presidential  cam 
paign  numbers  of  possible  candidates  would  re 
ceive  consideration  as  eligible  to  our  highest 
office.  It  will  be  said  that  just  as  many  candi 
dates  were  available  in  1916  as  at  any  other 
period  in  our  history,  but  this  is  neither  con- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

elusive  nor  heartening:  there  should  be  more! 
It  cannot  be  pretended  that  public  service  does 
not  attract  thousands  of  men;  it  can,  however, 
be  complained  that  theU)ffices  fall  very  largely 
to  the  inferior.  | 

We  have  just  witnessed  the  spectacle  of  a 
great  republic,  which  confides  the  broadest 
powers  to  its  chief  executive,  strangely  limited 
in  its  choice  of  candidates  for  the  presidency 
to  a  handful  of  men.  No  new  commanding 
figure  had  sprung  forward  from  the  ranks  of 
either  party  in  the  most  trying  period  the  coun 
try  has  known  in  fifty  years.  If  Mr.  Wilson's 
renomination  had  not  been  inevitable,  it  would 
be  very  difficult  to  name  another  Democrat 
who,  by  virtue  of  demonstrated  strength  and 
public  confidence,  would  have  been  able  to 
enter  the  lists  against  him.  Our  only  Demo 
cratic  Presidents  since  the  Civil  War  stepped 
from  a  governor's  seat  to  the  higher  office; 
but  I  know  of  no  Democratic  governor  who,  in 
1916,  could  have  entered  the  national  conven 
tion  supported  by  any  appreciable  public  de 
mand  for  his  nomination.  And  no  Democratic 
senator  could  have  debated  Mr.  Wilson's  claims 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

to  further  recognition.  Speaker  Clark,  with  the 
prestige  of  his  maximum  five  hundred  and  fifty- 
six  votes  on  the  tenth  ballot  of  the  Baltimore 
Convention,  might  have  been  able  to  reappear 
at  St.  Louis  with  a  similar  showing;  but  the 
Democratic  range  of  possibilities  certainly  had 
not  widened.  To  be  sure,  Mr.  Bryan  would 
have  remained  to  reckon  with;  but,  deeply  as 
the  party  and  the  country  is  indebted  to  him 
for  his  courageous  stand  against  the  bosses  at 
Baltimore,  he  could  hardly  have  received  a 
fourth  nomination. 

The  Republicans  were  in  no  better  case  when 
their  convention  met  at  Chicago.  The  Old 
Guard  was  stubbornly  resolved,  not  only  that 
Mr.  Roosevelt  should  not  be  nominated,  but 
that  he  should  not  dictate  the  choice  of  a  Re 
publican  candidate.  A  short  distance  from  the 
scene  of  their  deliberations,  the  Progressives, 
having  failed  to  establish  themselves  as  a  per 
manent  contestant  of  the  older  parties,  tena 
ciously  clung  to  their  leader.  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
effort  to  interest  the  Republicans  in  Senator 
Lodge  as  a  compromise  candidate  fell  upon 
deaf  ears.  Mr.  Hughes's  high  qualifications  may 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

not  be  seriously  questioned.  He  is  a  first-rate 
man,  and  the  lack  of  enthusiasm  with  which 
his  nomination  was  received  by  the  perfectly 
ordered  and  controlled  body  of  delegates  is 
not  to  his  discredit.  Sore  beset,  the  Old  Guard 
put  forth  a  candidate  little  to  their  taste,  one 
who,  if  elected,  would,  we  must  assume,  prove 
quite  impatient  of  the  harness  fashioned  for 
Presidents  by  the  skilled  armorers  of  the  good 
old  days  of  backward-looking  Republican 
ism. 

In  taking  from  the  bench  a  gentleman  who 
was  "out  of  politics"  the  Republicans  em 
phasized  their  lamentable  lack  of  available 
candidates.  Nothing  was  ever  sadder  than  the 
roll-call  of  States  for  the  nomination  of  "favor 
ite  sons."  Estimable  though  these  men  are,  no 
one  could  have  listened  to  the  nominating 
speeches  and  witnessed  the  subsequent  me 
chanical  demonstrations  without  depression. 
None  of  these  nominees  had  the  slightest 
chance;  the  orators  who  piped  their  little  lays 
in  praise  of  them  knew  they  had  not;  the  vast 
audience  that  witnessed  the  proceedings,  per 
fectly  aware  of  the  farcical  nature  of  these 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

banalities,  knew  they  had  not,  and  viewed  the 
show  with  contemptuous  amusement. 

The  heartiness  of  the  reception  accorded 
Messrs.  Depew  and  Cannon,  who  were  called 
upon  to  entertain  the  audience  during  a  lull 
in  the  proceedings,  was  not  without  its  pathos. 
They  dwelt  upon  the  party's  past  glories  with 
becoming  poignancy.  Mr.  Borah,  tactfully  pro 
jected  as  a  representative  of  a  newer  order  of 
Republicanism,  was  far  less  effective.  The  con 
vention  was  greatly  stirred  by  no  new  voice; 
no  new  leader  flashed  upon  the  stage  to  quicken 
it  to  new  and  high  endeavor.  No  less  inspired 
or  inspiring  body  of  men  ever  gathered  than 
those  who  constituted  the  Republican  Con 
vention  of  1916. 

I  asked  a  successful  lawyer  the  other  day 
how  he  accounted  for  the  lack  of  presidential 
timber. ("It's  because  the  average  American 
would  rather  be  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  \ 
Railroad  than  of  the  United  States,"  )he  an 
swered.  And  it  is  true,  beyond  question,  that 
our  highest  genius  is  employed  in  commerce 
and  business  rather  than  in  politics.  If  we,  the 
people,  do  not  seek  means  of  promoting  ad- 

[159] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

ministrative  wisdom  and  efficiency  in  our  gov 
ernment  we  shall  pay  one  of  these  days  a  high 
price  for  our  indifference.  There  is  danger  ahead 
unless  we  are  disposed  to  take  our  politics  more 
seriously,  and  unless  more  young  men  of  the 
best  talent  and  the  highest  aims  can  be  lured 
into  public  life.  The  present  showing  is  cer 
tainly  not  encouraging  as  to  the  future  of  Amer 
ican  statesmanship;  and  to  say  that  the  fit  have 
always  been  few,  is  not  a  particularly  consoling 
answer. 

It  is  true  of  a  period  still  susceptible  of  inti 
mate  scrutiny — say,  from  the  Civil  War — that 
presidential  candidates  have  been  chosen  in 
every  case  from  a  small  group  of  potentialities 
in  both  parties.  We  have  established  (stupidly 
in  any  large  view  of  the  matter)  geographical 
limitations  upon  the  possible  choice  that  greatly 
narrow  the  field.  Candidates  for  the  presidency 
must  be  chosen  with  an  eye  to  the  local  effect, 
from  States  essential  to  success.  Though  Mr. 
Elaine's  candidacy  was  surrounded  by  un 
usual  circumstances,  it  emphasizes,  neverthe 
less,  the  importance  to  the  parties  of  nominat 
ing  men  from  the  "pivotal"  States.  We  have 

[160] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

had  no  New  England  President  since  Franklin 
Pierce.  This  is  not  because  the  New  England 
States  have  not  produced  men  of  fitness,  but 
is  attributable  solely  to  the  small  representa 
tion  of  the  Northeastern  States  in  the  Electoral 
College. 

The  South,  likewise,  has  long  been  eliminated 
from  the  reckoning.  Though  born  in  Virginia 
Mr.  Wilson  is  distinctly  not  "a  Southern  man" 
in  the  familiar  connotations  of  that  term.  In 
old  times  the  Southern  States  contributed  men 
of  the  first  rank  to  both  houses  of  Congress; 
but,  apart  from  Mr.  Underwood  (who  received 
one  hundred  and  seventeen  and  one-half  votes 
at  Baltimore)  and  Mr.  John  Sharp  Williams, 
there  are  no  Southerners  of  conspicuous  attain 
ments  in  the  present  Senate.  The  Southern  bar 
embraces  now,  perhaps  as  truly  as  at  any  earlier 
period,  lawyers  of  distinguished  ability,  but 
they  apparently  do  not  find  public  life  attrac 
tive. 

No  President  has  yet  been  elected  from  be 
yond  the  Mississippi,  though  Mr.  Bryan,  thrice 
a  candidate,  widened  the  area  of  choice  west 
ward.  In  the  present  year  Governor  Johnson 

f  161! 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

and  Senator  Borah  were  the  only  trans-Mis 
sissippi  men  mentioned  as  possibilities,  and 
they  cut  no  figure  in  the  contest.  We  are  still 
a  congeries  of  States,  or  groups  of  States,  rather 
than  a  nation,  with  a  resulting  political  pro 
vincialism  that  is  disheartening  when  we  con 
sider  the  economic  and  political  power  we  wield 
increasingly  in  world  affairs. 

It  is  a  serious  commentary  upon  the  talent 
of  recent  congresses  that  the  House  has  de 
veloped  no  men  so  commanding  as  to  awaken 
speculation  as  to  their  availability  for  the  presi 
dency.  No  member  of  the  House  figured  this 
year  in  Republican  presidential  speculations. 
Why  do  the  second-rate  predominate  in  a  body 
that  may  be  called  the  most  typical  of  our  in 
stitutions  ?  Lincoln,  Hayes,  Garfield,  Elaine, 
McKinley,  Bryan,  all  candidates  for  the  presi 
dency,  had  been  members  of  the  House,  but  it 
has  become  negligible  as  a  training-school  for 
Presidents.  A  year  ago  Mr.  Mann  received  an 
occasional  honorable  mention,  but  his  petulant 
fling  at  the  President  as  "playing  politics,"  in 
the  grave  hour  following  the  despatch  of  the 
final  note  to  Germany,  effectually  silenced  his 

[162] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

admirers.  Admirable  as  partisanship  may  be, 
there  are  times  when  even  an  opposition  floor- 
leader  should  be  able  to  rise  above  it !  Nor  is  it 
possible  for  Democrats  to  point  to  Mr.  Kitchin 
with  any  degree  of  pride.  Of  both  these  men  it 
may  be  said  that  never  have  leaders  failed  so 
lamentably  to  rise  to  their  opportunities.  Mr. 
Hay,  of  Virginia,  Chairman  of  the  Committee 
on  Military  Affairs,  not  only  yielded  reluctantly 
to  the  public  pressure  for  preparedness,  but 
established  his  unfitness  to  hold  any  office  by 
tacking  on  the  army  bill  a  "joker"  designed 
to  create  a  place  for  a  personal  friend.  Mr. 
Wilson,  like  Mr.  Cleveland,  has  found  his  con 
gresses  unruly  or  wabbly  or  egregiously  stupid, 
manifesting  astonishingly  little  regard  for  their 
party  principles  or  policies.  The  present  ma 
jority  has  been  distinguished  for  nothing  so 
much  as  impotence  and  parochialism. 
(  Without  respect  to  party,  the  average  rep 
resentative's  vision  is  no  wider  than  his  dis 
trict,  and  he  ponders  national  affairs  solely 
from  a  selfish  standpoint.  JThrough  long  years 
we  have  used  him  as  an  errand-boy,  a  pension 
agent,  a  beggar  at  the  national  till.  His  time  is 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

spent  in  demonstrating  to  his  constituency  that 
when  "pork"  is  being  served  he  is  on  hand 
with  Oliver  Twist's  plate.  The  people  of  one 
district,  proud  of  their  new  post-office,  or  re 
joicing  in  the  appearance  of  a  government 
contractor's  dredge  in  their  creek,  do  not  con 
sider  that  their  devoted  congressman,  to  in 
sure  his  own  success,  has  been  obliged  to  as 
sist  other  members  in  a  like  pursuit  of  spoils 
and  that  the  whole  nation  bears  the  burden. 

The  member  who  carries  a  map  of  his  dis 
trict  with  him  to  Washington,  and  never  broad 
ens  his  horizon,  is  a  relic  of  simpler  times.  In 
days  like  these  we  can  ill  afford  to  smile  with 
our  old  tolerance  at  the  "plain  man  of  the 
people,"  who  is  likely  to  be  the  cheapest  kind  of 
demagogue.  A  frock  coat  and  a  kind  heart  are 
not  in  themselves  qualifications  for  a  congress 
man.  Eccentricity,  proudly  vaunted,  whimsicali 
ties  of  speech,  lofty  scorn  of  conventions,  have 
all  been  sadly  overworked.  Talent  of  the  first 
order  is  needed  in  Congress;  it  is  no  place  for 
men  who  can't  see  and  think  straight. 

The  Senate  preserves  at  least  something  of 
its  old  competence,  and  the  country  respects, 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

I  think,  the  hard  work  recently  performed  by 
it.  While  its  average  is  low,  it  contains  men — 
some  of  them  little  in  the  public  eye — who  are 
specialists  in  certain  fields.  There  is,  I  believe, 
a  general  feeling  that,  with  our  tremendous  in 
dustrial  and  commercial  interests,  the  presence 
in  the  upper  house  of  a  considerable  number  of 
business  men  and  of  fewer  lawyers  would 
make  for  a  better  balanced  and  more  represen 
tative  body.  A  first-rate  senator  need  not  be 
an  orator.  The  other  day,  when  Senator  Tag- 
gart,  a  new  member,  protested  vigorously 
against  the  latest  river-and -harbor  swindle  the 
country  applauded.  Refreshing,  indeed,  to 
hear  a  new  voice  in  those  sacred  precincts  raised 
against  waste  and  plunder !  Senator  Oliver,  of 
Pennsylvania,  a  protectionist,  of  course,  is 
probably  as  well  informed  on  the  tariff  as  any 
man  in  America.  I  give  him  the  benefit  of  this 
advertisement  the  more  cheerfully  as  I  do  not 
agree  with  his  views;  but  his  information  is 
entitled  to  all  respect.  The  late  David  Turpie, 
of  Indiana,  by  nature  a  recluse,  and  one  of  the 
most  unassuming  men  who  ever  sat  in  the 
Senate,  was  little  known  to  the  country  at 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

large.  I  once  heard  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Judge 
Gray  of  Delaware  engage  in  a  most  interesting 
exchange  of  anecdotes  illustrative  of  Mr.  Tur- 
pie's  wide  range  of  information.  He  was  a  first- 
rate  man.  There  is  room  in  the  Senate  for  a 
great  variety  of  talent,  and  its  efficiency  is  not 
injured  by  the  frequent  injection  of  new  blood. 
What  the  country  is  impatient  of  in  the  upper 
house  is  dead  men  who  have  little  information 
and  no  opinions  of  value  on  any  subject.  The 
election  of  senators  directly  by  the  people  will 
have  in  November  its  first  trial — another  step 
toward  pure  democracy.  We  shall  soon  be  able 
to  judge  whether  the  electorate,  acting  inde 
pendently,  is  more  to  be  trusted  than  the 
legislatures. 

I  should  be  sorry  to  apply  any  words  of  Presi 
dent  Wilson  in  a  quarter  where  he  did  not  in 
tend  them,  but  a  paragraph  of  his  address  to 
the  Washington  correspondents  (May  15)  might 
well  be  taken  to  heart  by  a  number  of  gentle 
men  occupying  seats  in  the  legislative  branch 
of  the  government. 

"I  have  a  profound  intellectual  contempt  for 
men  who  cannot  see  the  signs  of  the  times.  I 
[166] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

have  to  deal  with  some  men  who  know  no  more 
of  the  modern  processes  of  politics  than  if  they 
were  living  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  for 
them  I  have  a  profound  and  comprehensive 
intellectual  contempt.  They  are  blind;  they 
are  hopelessly  blind;  and  the  worst  of  it  is  I 
have  to  spend  hours  of  my  time  talking  to  them 
when  I  know  before  I  start,  quite  as  though  I 
had  finished,  that  it  is  absolutely  useless  to 
talk  to  them.  I  am  talking  in  vacuo" 

There  are,  indisputably,  limitations  upon 
the  patience  of  a  first-rate  man  engaged  in  the 
trying  occupation  of  attempting  to  communi 
cate  a  first-rate  idea  to  a  second-rate  mind. 


in 

In  recent  years  our  periodical  literature  has 
devoted  much  space  to  discussions  of  problems 
of  efficiency.  We  have  heard  repeatedly  of  the 
demand,  not  for  two-thousand-dollar  men,  but 
for  ten,  twenty,  and  fifty  thousand  dollar  men, 
in  the  great  industries.  The  efficiency  engineer 
has  sprung  into  being;  in  my  own  city  several 
hundred  employees  of  an  automobile  company 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

are  organized  into  a  class,  of  which  a  professor 
of  psychology  is  the  leader,  the  purpose  being 
the  promotion  of  individual  and  corporate 
efficiency.  The  first-rate  man  is  in  demand  as 
a  buyer,  a  salesman,  a  foreman,  a  manager. 
One  of  the  largest  corporations  in  America  pays 
its  employees  bonuses  apportioned  on  a  basis 
of  their  value  as  demonstrated  by  actual  per 
formances  from  month  to  month.  The  minutest 
economies  are  a  matter  of  daily  study  in  every 
manufacturing  and  commercial  house;  the  hunt 
for  the  first-rate  man  is  unceasing.  Executive 
ability,  a  special  genius  for  buying  and  selling, 
need  never  go  unrecognized.  Recently  a  New 
York  bank  spent  months  searching  for  a  bond- 
seller  and  finally  chose  an  obscure  young  man 
from  a  Western  town  who  fell  by  chance  under 
the  eye  of  a  "scout"  sent  out  to  look  for  talent. 
But  this  eager  search  for  the  first-rate  man, 
so  marked  in  commerce  and  industry,  only 
rarely  touches  our  politics.  It  is  only  in  politics 
that  the  second-rate  man  finds  the  broadest 
field  for  the  exercise  of  his  talents. 

A   President   is   beset   by  many  embarrass 
ments  in  the  exercise  of  the  appointing  power. 
[168] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

Our  feudal  system,  by  which  senators  and  rep 
resentatives  are  the  custodians  of  post-office, 
district  attorneyships,  marshalships,  and  count 
less  other  positions,  does  not  make  for  the 
recognition  of  the  fit.  While  the  power  to  ap 
point  is  vested  in  the  executive,  his  choice  must 
be  approved  by  the  senators  or  representatives. 
As  the  system  operates,  it  is  not  really  the 
President  who  appoints  but  the  senators  or 
representatives,  and  the  President  is  expected  to 
meet  their  wishes.  To  question  their  recommen 
dations  is  to  arouse  animosity,  and  where  the  fate 
of  important  legislation  hangs  in  the  balance  a 
President  is  under  strong  temptation  to  accept 
the  recommendation  of  second-rate  men  in  order 
to  keep  the  members  of  the  law-making  bodies 
in  good  humor. 

In  the  professions  and  industries,  in  com 
mercial  houses,  even  on  the  farm,  the  second- 
rate  man  is  not  wanted;  but  political  jobs, 
high  and  low,  are  everywhere  open  to  him. 
Everything  but  the  public  service  is  standard 
ized;  politics  alone  puts  a  premium  upon  in 
feriority.  The  greatest  emphasis  is  laid  upon 
the  word  service  in  every  field  but  government. 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

The  average  American  "wants  what  he  wants 
when  he  wants  it,"  and  is  proud  of  his  ability 
to  get  it.  "If  it  isn't  right,  we  make  it  right," 
is  a  popular  business  slogan.  Hotels  whose  in 
different  service  wins  the  displeasure  of  the 
travelling  public  are  execrated  and  blacklisted. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  have  listened  for  hours 
to  the  laudation  of  good  hotels,  of  the  efficiency 
of  railroads,  of  automobile  manufacturers  who 
"give  good  service."  We  have  a  pride  in  these 
things;  we  like  to  relate  incidents  of  our  suc 
cessful  "kick"  when  the  berth  that  we  had 
reserved  by  telegraph  wasn't  forthcoming  and 
how  we  "took  it  up"  with  the  railroad  au 
thorities,  and  how  quickly  our  wounded  feel 
ings  were  poulticed.  "I  guess  that  won't  happen 
again  on  that  road  !"  we  chortle.  Conversely  we 
make  our  errands  to  a  city  hall  or  court-house 
as  few  as  possible,  knowing  that  the  "service," 
offered  at  the  people's  expense  is  of  a  dif 
ferent  order,  and  public  officials  may  not  be 
approached  in  that  confident  spirit  with  which 
we  carry  our  needs  or  complaints  to  the  heads 
of  a  private  business. 

Or,  if  some  favor  is  to  be  asked,  we  brag 


THE   SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

that  we  have  seen  "Jim"  or  "Bob"  and  that 
he  "fixed"  it  for  us.  It  happens  not  infrequently 
that  we  want  something  "fixed"  from  purely 
selfish  motives — something  that  should  not  be 
"fixed" — and  it  gives  us  a  pleasurable  sense  of 
our  "influence"  to  know  that,  as  we  have  al 
ways  treated  "Jim"  or  "Bob"  all  right,  "Jim" 
or  "Bob"  cheerfully  assists  us.  We  chuckle 
over  the  ease  with  which  he  accomplished  the 
fixing  where  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
us  to  effect  it  through  a  direct  legitimate  ap 
peal.  Thus  in  hundreds  of  ways  a  boss,  great 
or  small,  is  able  to  grant  favors  that  cost  him 
nothing,  thereby  blurring  the  vision  of  those 
he  places  under  obligations  to  the  means  by 
which  he  gains  his  power. 

In  municipal  government  the  second  and  the 
third  rate  man,  on  down  to  a  point  where  dif 
ferentiations  fade  to  the  vanishing  point,  finds 
his  greatest  hope  and  security.  As  first-rate 
men  are  not  available  for  the  offices,  they 
fall  naturally  to  the  inferior,  the  incompetent, 
or  the  corrupt.  In  few  cities  of  a  hundred  thou 
sand  population  is  a  man  of  trained  ability 
and  recognized  fitness  ever  seriously  considered 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

for  the  mayoralty.  Modern  city  government, 
with  the  broad  powers  conferred  upon  mayors, 
requires  intelligence  of  the  highest  order.  Usu 
ally  without  experience  in  large  affairs,  and 
crippled  by  a  well-established  tradition  that 
he  must  reward  party  workers  and  personal 
friends,  the  incumbent  surrounds  himself  with 
second  and  third  rate  men,  for  whose  blunders 
the  taxpayer  meekly  pays  the  bills. 

The  mayor's  office  is  hardly  second  to  the 
presidency  in  the  variety  of  its  perplexities. 
A  man  of  the  best  intentions  will  fail  to  satisfy 
a  whole  community.  There  is  in  every  city  a 
group  of  reformers  who  believe  that  a  mayor 
should  be  able  to  effect  the  moral  regeneration 
of  the  human  race  in  one  term  of  office.  The 
first-rate  man  is  aware  of  this,  and  the  knowl 
edge  diminishes  his  anxiety  to  seek  the  place. 
A  common  indictment  against  the  capable  man 
who  volunteers  for  municipal  service  is  that 
his  ignorance  of  political  methods  would  make 
him  "impractical"  if  he  were  elected.  This 
sentiment  is  expressed  frequently — often  by 
large  taxpayers.  The  insinuation  is  that  a  man 
of  character  and  ideals  would  be  unable  to 


THE   SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

deal  with  the  powers  that  prey  by  indirection. 
This  is  quite  true:  the  fit  man,  the  first-rate 
man,  who  would  undertake  the  office  untram 
melled  by  political  obligations,  would  not  know 
the  "good  fellows"  who  must  be  dealt  with  in 
a  spirit  of  leniency.  This  delicate  duty  is  more 
safely  intrusted  to  one  who  brings  a  certain 
sympathy  to  bear  upon  the  task. 

Whatever  may  be  the  merits  of  party  gov 
ernment  in  its  national  application,  there  is 
no  sound  argument  for  its  continuance  in  mu 
nicipal  affairs.  Its  effect  is  to  discourage  utterly, 
in  most  communities,  any  effort  the  first-rate 
man  may  be  absurd  enough  to  make  to  win 
enough  of  the  franchises  of  his  fellow  citizens 
to  land  him  in  the  mayoralty.  On  one  occasion 
a  Republican  United  States  senator,  speaking 
for  his  party's  candidate  for  the  mayoralty 
at  the  last  rally  of  a  campaign  in  my  own  city, 
declared  that  his  party  must  win,  as  defeat 
would  have  a  discouraging  effect  on  Republicans 
elsewhere.  A  few  years  ago  both  parties  chose, 
in  the  Indianapolis  primaries,  mayoralty  candi 
dates  of  conspicuous  unfitness.  The  Republican 
candidate  was  an  auctioneer,  whose  ready 

[173] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

tongue  and  drolleries  on  the  stump  made  him 
the  central  figure  in  a  highly  picturesque  cam 
paign.  He  was  elected  and  the  affairs  of  a 
city  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  people  were  cheer 
fully  turned  over  to  him.  Ignorant  of  the  very 
terminology  in  which  municipal  affairs  are  dis 
cussed,  he  avoided  embarrassment  by  remain 
ing  away  from  his  office  as  much  as  possible. 
In  the  last  year  of  his  administration — if  so 
dignified  a  term  may  be  applied  to  his  incum 
bency — he  resigned,  to  avoid  the  responsibility 
of  dealing  with  disorders  consequent  upon  a 
serious  strike,  and  took  refuge  on  the  vaude 
ville  stage.  He  was  no  more  unfit  on  the  day 
he  resigned  than  on  the  day  of  his  nomination 
or  election — a  fact  of  which  the  electorate  had 
ample  knowledge.  He  was  chosen  merely  be 
cause  he  was  a  vote-getter.  Republicans  voted 
for  him  to  preserve  their  regularity.* 

I  am  prolonging  these  comments  on  munic 
ipal  government  for  the  reason  that  the  city 
as  a  political  factor  is  of  so  great  influence  in 
the  State  and  nation,  and  because  the  domi 
nation  of  the  unfit  in  the  smaller  unit  offers 

*This  gentleman  again  captured  the  Republican  nomination 
for  mayor  of  Indianapolis  in  the  May  primary,  1921. 

[174! 


THE   SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

more  tangible  instances  for  study.  The  impedi 
ments  encountered  by  the  fit  who  offer  them 
selves  for  public  service  are  many,  and  often 
ludicrous.  Twice,  in  Indianapolis,  men  of  the 
best  standing  have  yielded  under  pressure  to 
a  demand  that  they  offer  themselves  for  the 
Republican  mayoralty  nomination.  Neither  had 
the  slightest  intention  of  using  the  mayor 
alty  as  a  stepping-stone  to  higher  office;  the 
motives  animating  both  were  the  highest.  One 
of  them  was  quickly  disposed  of  by  the  report 
sent  "down  the  line"  that  he  had  not  been 
as  regular  as  he  might  be,  and  by  this  token 
was  an  undesirable  candidate.  The  other  was 
subjected  to  a  crushing  defeat  in  the  pri 
mary.  There  was  nothing  against  him  except 
that  he  was  unknown  to  the  "boys  in  the 
trenches." 

From  the  window  by  which  I  write  I  can 
see  the  chimneys  of  the  flourishing  industry 
conducted  by  the  first  of  these  gentlemen. 
He  has  constantly  shown  his  public  spirit  in 
the  most  generous  fashion;  he  is  an  admirable 
citizen.  I  dare  say  there  is  not  an  incompetent 
man  or  woman  on  his  pay-roll.  If  he  were  out 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

of  employment  and  penniless  to-morrow,  scores 
of  responsible  positions  would  be  open  to  him. 
But  the  public  would  not  employ  him;  his  own 
party  would  not  even  permit  its  membership 
to  express  its  opinion  of  him;  and  had  he  gone 
before  the  electorate  he  would  in  all  likelihood 
have  been  defeated  by  an  invincible  combina 
tion  of  every  element  of  incompetence  and 
venality  in  the  city. 

The  other  gentleman,  who  began  life  as  a 
bank  clerk,  made  a  success  of  a  commercial 
business,  and  is  now  president  of  one  of  the 
largest  banks  in  the  State.  Such  men  are  in 
eligible  for  municipal  office;  they  are  first-rate 
men;  the  very  fact  that  they  are  men  of  char 
acter  and  ability  who  could  be  trusted  to  man 
age  public  affairs  as  they  conduct  their  private 
business,  removes  them  at  once  from  consid 
eration. 

Such  experiences  as  these  are  not  calculated 
to  encourage  the  capable  man,  the  first-rate 
man,  to  attempt  to  gain  a  public  position.  In 
fact,  it  is  the  business  of  political  organizations 
to  make  the  defeat  of  such  men  as  humiliating 
as  possible.  They  must  be  got  rid  of;  they  must 
be  taught  better  manners  ! 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

The  good  nature  with  which  we  accept  the 
second-rate  man  in  municipal  office  is  one  of 
the  most  bewildering  of  all  our  political  phe 
nomena.  "Well,  things  have  always  been  this 
way,  and  I  guess  they  always  will  be,"  ex 
presses  the  average  citizen's  feeling  about  the 
matter.  As  he  cannot,  without  much  personal 
discomfort,  change  the  existing  order,  he  finds 
solace  in  the  reflection  that  he  couldn't  do 
anything  about  it  if  he  tried.  The  more  in 
tolerant  he  is  of  second-rate  employees  in  his 
own  business,  the  more  supinely  he  views  the 
transfer  of  public  business  from  one  set  of  in 
competents  to  another. 

To  lift  municipal  government  out  of  politics 
in  States  where  the  party  organizations  never 
shut  up  shop  but  are  ceaselessly  plotting  and 
planning  to  perfect  their  lines,  is  manifestly 
no  easy  task,  but  it  may  be  accomplished  by 
effective  leadership  where  the  people  are  sin 
cerely  interested.  And  it  is  significant  that  the 
present  movement  for  an  abandonment  of  the 
old  pernicious,  costly  system  took  rise  from 
the  dire  calamities  that  befell  two  cities — Gal- 
veston  and  Dayton — which  were  suddenly 
confronted  with  problems  that  it  would  have 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

been  madness  to  intrust  to  incompetents.  This 
illustrates  a  point  overlooked  by  that  large 
body  of  Americans  who  refuse  to  bring  to  their 
politics  the  test  of  fitness  that  they  enforce 
in  private  business.  The  second-rate  man  may 
successfully  hide  his  errors  in  normal  condi 
tions,  but  his  faults  and  weaknesses  become 
glaringly  apparent  when  any  severe  demands 
are  made  upon  him. 

I  can  suggest  no  permanent  solution  of  the 
problem  of  municipal  government  that  does 
not  embrace  the  training  of  men  for  its  par 
ticular  duties.  A  development  of  the  city-mana 
ger  plan,  of  nation-wide  scope,  fortified  by 
special  courses  of  training  in  schools  able  to 
give  the  dignity  of  a  stable  profession  to 
municipal  administration  may  ultimately  be 
the  remedy. 

IV 

The  debauchery  of  young  men  by  the  bosses 
is  a  familiar  phase  of  our  politics  and  is  most 
potent  in  the  game  of  checking  the  advance  of 
the  fit  and  assuring  domination  by  the  unfit. 
Several  thousand  young  men  leave  college 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

every  year  with  some  hope  of  entering  upon  a 
political  career.  By  the  time  a  young  man  is 
graduated  he  has  elected  to  follow  the  banner 
of  some  party.  If  he  lives  in  a  city  and  shows 
a  disposition  to  be  of  practical  service,  he  is 
warmly  welcomed  into  the  fold  of  one  of  the 
organizations.  He  quickly  becomes  aware  that 
only  by  the  display  of  a  servile  obedience  can 
he  expect  to  become  persona  grata  to  the  party 
powers.  By  the  time  he  has  passed  through  one 
campaign  as  a  trusted  member  of  a  machine,  his 
political  illusions  are  well-nigh  destroyed.  His 
childish  belief  that  only  the  fit  should  be  elevated 
to  positions  of  responsibility,  that  public  office 
is  a  public  trust,  is  pretty  well  dissipated. 
"Good"  men,  he  finds,  are  good  only  by  the 
tests  of  partisanship  as  applied  by  the  bosses. 
To  strike  at  a  boss  is  Use  majeste,  and  invites 
drastic  punishment. 

The  purpose  of  the  young  men's  political 
clubs  everywhere  is  to  infuse  the  young  voter 
with  the  spirit  of  blind  obedience  and  subjec 
tion.  He  is  graciously  permitted  to  serve  on 
club  committees  as  a  step  toward  more  impor 
tant  recognition  as  ward  committeeman,  or  he 

[179] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

is  given  a  place  of  some  sort  at  headquarters 
during  the  campaign.  There  are  dozens  of  ways 
in  which  the  willing  young  man  may  be  of  use. 
His  illusions  rapidly  vanish.  He  is  flattered  by 
the  attentions  of  the  bosses,  who  pat  him  on 
the  back  and  assure  him  that  they  appreciate 
his  loyal  devotion  to  the  party.  With  the  hope 
of  preferment  before  him  it  is  essential  that 
he  establish  as  quickly  as  possible  a  reputation 
for  "regularity."  If  his  wise  elders  note  any 
restiveness,  any  tendency  toward  independence, 
they  at  once  warn  him  that  he  must  "play  the 
game  straight,"  and  shut  his  eyes  to  the  sins 
of  his  party.  Or  if  his  counsellors  sympathize 
with  his  predicament  they  advise  him  that  the 
only  way  he  can  gain  a  position  from  which  to 
make  his  ideas  effective  is  by  winning  the 
favor  of  the  bosses  and  building  up  a  personal 
following. 

In  a  campaign  preliminary  to  a  local  primary 
in  my  city  I  appealed  to  a  number  of  young 
men  of  good  antecedents  and  rather  excep 
tional  education,  to  oppose  a  particular  candi 
date.  One  of  them,  on  coming  home  from  an 
Eastern  university,  had  introduced  himself 
[180] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

to  me  in  the  name  of  a  great  educator  who 
was  one  of  my  particular  admirations.  In  every 
one  of  these  cases  I  was  politely  rebuffed.  They 
said  the  gentleman  whose  ambitions  annoyed 
me  was  a  "good  fellow"  and  "all  right";  they 
couldn't  see  that  any  good  would  come  of  an 
tagonizing  him.  And  they  were  right.  No  good 
did  come  of  it  so  far  as  the  result  was  concerned. 
There  are  countless  ways  in  which  a  young 
lawyer  finds  his  connection  with  a  machine 
helpful.  A  word  in  the  right  quarter  brings  him 
a  client — a  saloonkeeper,  perhaps,  who  is  meet 
ing  with  resistance  in  his  effort  to  secure  a  re 
newal  of  his  license;  or  petty  criminal  cases 
before  magistrates — easily  arranged  where  the 
machine  controls  the  police.  He  cannot  fail  to  be 
impressed  with  the  perfection  of  a  system  that 
so  smoothly  wields  power  by  indirection.  The 
mystery  of  it  all  and  the  potency  of  the  names 
of  the  high  powers  appeal  to  his  imagination; 
there  is  something  of  romance  in  it.  A  deputy- 
ship  in  the  office  of  the  prosecuting  attorney 
leads  on  to  a  seat  in  the  legislature,  and  he  may 
go  to  Congress  if  he  is  "good."  He  is  purchased 
with  a  price,  bought,  and  paid  for;  his  status 

[181] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

is  fixed;  he  is  a  second-rate  man.  And  by  every 
such  young  man  in  America  the  ideal  of  democ 
racy,  the  hope  of  republican  government,  is 
just  so  much  weakened. 


Government  by  the  unfit,  domination  by  the 
inferior,  is  greatly  assisted  by  a  widely  accepted 
superstition  that  a  second-rate  man,  finding  him 
self  in  a  position  of  responsibility,  is  likely  to 
display  undreamed  of  powers.  The  idea  seems  to 
be  that  the  electorate,  by  a  kind  of  laying  on  of 
hands,  confers  fitness  where  none  has  previously 
existed.  Unfortunately  such  miracles  are  not  fre 
quent  enough  to  form  the  basis  of  a  political 
philosophy.  Recourse  to  the  recall  as  a  means  of 
getting  rid  of  an  undesirable  office-holder  strikes 
me  as  only  likely  to  increase  the  indifference, 
the  languor,  with  which  we  now  perform  our 
political  duties. 

Contempt  for  the  educated  man,  a  prepos 
terous  assumption  that  by  the  very  fact  of  his 
training  he  is  unfitted  for  office,  continues 
prevalent  in  many  minds.  Conscious  of  this 


THE   SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

disqualification,  President  Wilson  finds  amuse 
ment  at  times  in  referring  to  himself  as  a  school 
master;  much  criticism  of  his  administration 
is  based  upon  the  melancholy  fact  that  he  is  a 
"professor,"  a  scholar,  as  though  a  lifelong  stu 
dent  of  history  and  politics  were  disqualified, 
by  the  very  fact  of  his  preparation,  for  exalted 
office. 

The  direct  primary,  as  a  means  of  assisting 
first-rate  men  to  office,  has  not  yet  realized 
what  was  hoped  for  it,  and  there  is  growing 
scepticism  as  to  its  efficacy.  It  is  one  of  our 
marked  national  failings  that  we  expect  laws 
and  systems  to  work  automatically.  If  the 
first-rate  man  cherishes  the  delusion  that  he 
need  only  offer  himself  to  his  fellow  partisans 
and  they  will  delightedly  spring  to  his  sup 
port,  he  is  doomed  to  a  sad  awakening.  Unless 
he  has  taken  the  precaution  to  ask  the  or 
ganization's  permission  to  put  his  name  on 
the  ballot  and  is  promised  support,  he  must 
perfect  an  organization  of  his  own  with  which 
to  make  his  fight  in  the  primary.  He  must 
open  headquarters  from  which  to  carry  on  his 
operations,  make  speeches  before  as  many 

[1831 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

citizens  as  can  be  assembled  to  hear  him,  enlist 
and  pay  helpers,  most  of  whom  expect  jobs  in 
case  he  is  successful.  He  must  drop  money  into 
palms  of  whose  existence  he  never  dreamed, 
the  recipients  of  his  bounty  being  frequently 
"scouts"  from  his  opponents'  camps.  The 
blackmailing  of  candidates  by  charitable  or 
ganizations — and  churches  are  not  without 
shame  in  this  particular — is  only  one  of  the 
thousand  annoyances.  He  is  not  likely  to  enjoy 
immunity  from  newspaper  attack.  Months  of 
time  and  much  money  are  required  for  a  primary 
campaign.  I  venture  the  assertion  that  many 
hundreds  of  candidates  for  office  in  this  year 
of  grace  began  their  campaigns  for  election  al 
ready  encumbered  by  debts  incurred  in  win 
ning  their  nominations,  which  brought  them 
only  half-way  to  the  goal.  Such  a  burden,  with 
all  its  connotations  of  curtailed  liberty  and 
shackling  obligations,  may  not  be  viewed  with 
equanimity.  Instead  of  making  office-holding 
more  attractive  to  the  first-rate  man,  the  di 
rect  primary  multiplies  his  discouragements. 

The  second-rate  man,   being  willing  to  ac 
cept  office  as  a  party,  not  a  public,  trust,  and 

[184] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

to  use  it  in  every  way  possible  for  the  strength 
ening  of  party  lines,  has  the  first-rate  man,  who 
has  only  his  merits  to  justify  his  ambitions,  at 
a  serious  disadvantage.  When  an  organization 
(the  term  by  which  a  machine  prefers  to  be 
called)  finds  that  it  is  likely  to  meet  with  de 
feat  through  public  resentment  of  its  excesses, 
it  will  sometimes  turn  to  a  first-rate  man.  But 
this  is  only  in  cases  of  sheer  desperation.  There 
is  nothing  more  amusing  than  the  virtuous  air 
with  which  a  machine  will  nominate  a  first- 
rate  man  where  there  is  no  possible  danger  of 
party  success.  He  it  is  whom  the  bosses  are 
willing  to  sacrifice.  The  trick  is  turned  in 
geniously  to  the  bosses'  advantage,  for  defeat 
in  such  instances  proves  to  the  truly  loyal  that 
only  the  "regulars"  can  get  anywhere. 

A  young  friend  of  mine  once  persuaded  me  to 
join  him  in  "bucking"  a  primary  for  the  elec 
tion  of  delegates  to  a  State  convention.  I  cheer 
fully  lent  my  assistance  in  this  laudable  enter 
prise,  the  more  readily  when  he  confided  to  me 
his  intention  of  employing  machine  methods. 
A  young  man  of  intelligence  and  humor,  he  had, 
by  means  which  I  deplored  but  to  which  I  con- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

tributed,  lured  from  the  organization  one  of 
its  star  performers.  I  speak  of  this  without 
shame,  that  the  cynical  may  not  complain  that 
I  am  in  politics  a  high  brow  or  dreamy  lotus 
eater.  Our  ally  knew  the  game;  he  knew  how  to 
collect  and  deliver  votes  by  the  most  approved 
machine  methods.  We  watched  him  work  with 
the  keenest  satisfaction.  He  brought  citizens  in 
great  numbers  to  vote  our  "slate,"  many  of 
them  men  who  had  never  been  in  the  ward 
before.  We  gloated  with  satisfaction  as  the  day 
declined  and  our  votes  continued  to  pile  up.  Our 
moral  natures  were  in  the  balance;  if  we  beat 
the  machine  with  machine  methods  we  meant 
never,  never  to  be  good  again  !  It  seemed  in 
deed  that  our  investment  in  the  skilled  worker 
could  not  fail  of  success.  When  the  votes  were 
counted,  oh,  what  a  fall  was  there,  my  country 
men  !  "Our  man"  had  merely  used  our  auto 
mobiles,  and  I  refrain  from  saying  what  other 
munitions  of  war,  to  get  out  the  vote  of  the 
opposition !  We  had  in  other  words,  accom 
plished  our  own  defeat ! 


186] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 


VI 

The  past  year  has  been  marked  by  the  agita 
tion  for  military  preparedness;  civil  prepared 
ness  strikes  me  as  being  of  equal  importance. 
If  I  am  right — or  only  half  right — in  my  as 
sertion  that  we  are  governed  very  largely  by 
second-rate  men  and  that  public  business  is 
confided  chiefly  to  the  unfit,  then  here  is  a 
matter  that  cannot  be  ignored  by  those  who 
look  forward  hopefully  to  the  future  of  Amer 
ican  democracy.  There  are  more  dangers  with 
in  than  without,  and  our  tame  acceptance  of 
incompetence  in  civil  office  would  certainly 
bring  calamity  if  suffered  in  a  military  es 
tablishment.  The  reluctance  of  first-rate  men 
to  accept  or  seek  office  is  more  disquieting 
than  the  slow  enlistments  in  the  army  and 
navy.  Competence  in  the  one  would  do  much 
to  assure  intelligent  foresight  and  efficiency  in 
the  other. 

It  is  a  disturbing  thought  that  we,  the  people, 
really  care  so  little,  and  that  we  are  so  willing 
to  suffer  government  by  the  second-rate,  only 
murmuring  despairingly  when  the  unhappy 

[is?] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

results  of  our  apathy  bring  us  sharply  face  to 
face  with  failure. 

"The  fatalism  of  the  multitude,"  commented 
upon  strikingly  by  Lord  Bryce,  has  established 
in  us  the  superstition  that  a  kindly  providence 
presides  over  our  destinies  and  that  "every 
thing  will  come  out  right  in  the  end."  But  gov 
ernment  by  good  luck  is  not  a  safe  reliance 
for  a  nation  of  a  hundred  millions.  Nothing 
in  history  supports  a  blind  faith  in  numbers 
or  in  the  wisdom  of  majorities.  America's  hope 
lies  in  the  multiplication  of  the  fit — the  saving 
remnant  of  Isaiah's  prophecies  and  Plato's 
philosophy — a  doctrine  applied  to  America  by 
Matthew  Arnold,  who  remains  one  of  the 
shrewdest  and  most  penetrating  of  all  our 
critics.  Mr.  Arnold  distrusted  numbers  and 
had  no  confidence  in  majorities.  He  said: 

To  be  a  voice  outside  the  state,  speaking  to  mankind  or 
to  the  future,  perhaps  shaking  the  actual  state  to  pieces 
in  doing  so,  one  man  will  suffice.  But  to  reform  the  state 
in  order  to  save  it,  to  preserve  it  by  changing  it,  a  body 
of  workers  is  needed  as  well  as  a  leader — a  considerable 
body  of  workers,  placed  at  many  points,  and  operating  in 
many  directions. 

[188] 


THE  SECOND-RATE  MAN  IN  POLITICS 

These  days,  amid  "the  thunder  of  the  cap 
tains,  and  the  shouting,"  there  must  be  many 
thousands  of  Americans  who  are  truly  of  the 
saving  remnant,  who  view  public  matters  so 
berly  and  hold  as  something  very  fine  and 
precious  our  heritage  of  democracy.  These  we 
may  suppose  will  witness  the  dawn  of  election 
day  with  a  lively  apprehension  of  their  august 
responsibilities,  and  exercise  their  right  of  se 
lection  sanely  and  wisely.  "They  only  who 
build  upon  ideas,  build  for  eternity,"  wrote 
Emerson. 

This  nation  was  founded  on  ideas,  and  clearly 
in  the  ideas  of  the  fit,  the  earnest,  the  serious, 
lies  its  hope  for  the  future.  To  eliminate  the 
second-rate,  to  encourage  the  first-rate  man 
to  undertake  offices  of  responsibility  and 
power — such  must  be  the  immediate  concern 
and  the  urgent  business  of  all  who  love  America. 


[189] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

I 

"^  •  ^AKE    your  choice;    I   have   bungalows 
to  burn,'*  said  the  architect. 

He  and  his  ally,  the  real-estate  man, 
had  been  unduly  zealous  in  the  planting  of 
bungalows  in  the  new  addition  beyond  the 
college.  About  half  of  them  remained  unsold, 
and  purchasers  were  elusive.  A  promised  ex 
tension  of  the  trolley-line  had  not  materialized; 
and  half  a  dozen  houses  of  the  bungalow  type, 
scattered  along  a  ridge  through  which  streets 
had  been  hacked  in  the  most  brutal  fashion, 
spoke  for  the  sanguine  temper  of  the  projectors 
of  Sherwood  Forest.  The  best  thing  about  the 
new  streets  was  their  names,  which  were  a 
testimony  to  the  fastidious  taste  of  a  professor 
in  the  college  who  had  frequently  thundered 
in  print  against  our  ignoble  American  nomen 
clature. 

It  was  hoped  that  Sherwood  Forest  would 
prove  particularly  attractive  to  newly  married 

[  190] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR   LANE 

folk  of  cultivation,  who  spoke  the  same  social 
language.  There  must,  therefore,  be  a  Black- 
stone  Road,  as  a  lure  for  struggling  lawyers; 
a  Lister  Avenue,  to  tickle  the  imagination  of 
young  physicians;  and  Midas  Lane,  in  which 
the  business  man,  sitting  at  his  own  hearth 
side  far  from  the  jarring  city,  might  dream  of 
golden  harvests.  To  the  young  matron  anxious 
to  keep  in  touch  with  art  and  literature,  what 
could  have  been  more  delightful  than  the 
thought  of  receiving  her  mail  in  Emerson  Road, 
Longfellow  Lane,  Audubon  Road,  or  any  one 
of  a  dozen  similar  highways  (if  indeed  the  new 
streets  might  strictly  be  so  called)  almost  with 
in  sound  of  the  college  bell  ?  The  college  was  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  away,  and  yet  near  enough 
to  shed  its  light  upon  this  new  colony  that 
had  risen  in  a  strip  of  forest  primeval,  which, 
as  the  promoting  company's  circulars  more  or 
less  accurately  recited,  was  only  thirty  minutes 
from  lobsters  and  head  lettuce. 

This  was  all  a  year  ago,  just  as  August 
haughtily  relinquished  the  world  to  the  sway 
of  September.  I  held  the  chair  of  applied  soci 
ology  in  the  college,  and  had  taken  a  year  off 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

to  write  a  number  of  articles  for  which  I  had 
long  been  gathering  material.  It  had  occurred 
to  me  that  it  would  be  worth  while  to  write 
a  series  of  sociological  studies  in  the  form  of 
short  stories.  My  plan  was  to  cut  small  cross- 
sections  in  the  social  strata  of  the  adjoining 
city,  in  the  suburban  village  which  embraced 
the  college,  and  in  the  adjacent  farm  region, 
and  attempt  to  portray,  by  a  nice  balancing 
of  realism  and  romance,  the  lives  of  the  people 
in  the  several  groups  I  had  been  observing.  I 
had  talked  to  an  editor  about  it  and  he  had 
encouraged  me  to  try  my  hand. 

I  felt  enough  confidence  in  the  scheme  to 
risk  a  year's  leave,  and  I  now  settled  down  to 
my  writing  zestfully.  I  had  already  submitted 
three  stories,  which  had  been  accepted  in  a 
cordial  spirit  that  proved  highly  stimulating 
to  further  endeavor,  and  the  first  of  the  series, 
called  The  Lords  of  the  Round  House — a  sketch 
of  the  domestic  relationships  and  social  con 
ditions  of  the  people  living  near  the  railroad 
shops — had  been  commented  on  favorably  as 
a  fresh  and  novel  view  of  an  old  subject.  My 
second  study  dealt  with  a  settlement  sustained 


THE  LADY  OF  LAN  DOR  LANE 

by  the  canning  industry,  and  under  the  title, 
Eros  and  the  Peach  Crop,  I  had  described  the 
labors  and  recreations  of  this  community 
honestly,  and  yet  with  a  degree  of  humor. 

As  a  bachelor  professor  I  had  been  boarding 
near  the  college  with  the  widow  of  a  minister; 
but  now  that  I  was  giving  my  time  wholly  to 
writing  I  found  this  domicile  intolerable.  My 
landlady,  admirable  woman  though  she  was, 
was  altogether  too  prone  to  knock  at  my  door 
on  trifling  errands.  When  I  had  filled  my  note 
book  with  memoranda  for  a  sketch  dealing 
with  the  boarding-house  evil  (it  has  lately  ap 
peared  as  Charging  What  the  Onion  Will  Bear), 
I  resolved  to  find  lodgings  elsewhere.  And  be 
sides,  the  assistant  professor  of  natural  sciences 
occupied  a  room  adjoining  mine,  and  the  visits 
of  strange  reptilia  to  my  quarters  were  far 
from  stimulating  to  literary  labor. 

I  had  long  been  immensely  curious  as  to 
those  young  and  trusting  souls  who  wed  in 
the  twenties,  establish  homes,  and,  unterrified 
by  cruel  laws  enacted  for  the  protection  of 
confiding  creditors,  buy  homes  on  the  instal 
ment  plan,  keep  a  cow,  carry  life  insurance, 

[193] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

buy  theatre  tickets,  maintain  a  baby,  and  fit 
as  snugly  into  the  social  structure  as  though 
the  world  were  made  for  them  alone.  In  my 
tramps  about  the  city  I  had  marked  with  pro 
fessional  interest  the  appearance  of  great 
colonies  of  bungalows  which  had  risen  within 
a  few  years,  and  which  spoke  with  an  appeal 
ing  eloquence  for  an  obstinate  confidence  in 
the  marriage  tie.  In  my  late  afternoon  excur 
sions  through  these  sprightly  suburban  regions 
I  had  gazed  with  the  frankest  admiration  up 
on  wholly  charming  young  persons  stepping 
blithely  along  new  cement  walks,  equipped 
with  the  neatest  of  card-cases,  or  bearing  em 
broidered  bags  of  sewing;  and  maids  in  the 
smartest  of  caps  opened  doors  to  them.  Through 
windows  guarded  by  the  whitest  of  draperies, 
I  had  caught  glimpses  of  our  native  forests  as 
transformed  into  the  sturdiest  of  arts-and- 
crafts  furniture.  Both  flower  and  kitchen  gar 
dens  were  squeezed  into  compact  plots  of  earth; 
a  Gerald  or  a  Geraldine  cooed  from  a  perambu 
lator  at  the  gate  of  at  least  every  other  estab 
lishment;  and  a  " syndicate'1  man-of-all-work 
moved  serenely  from  furnace  to  furnace,  from 

[194] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

lawn  to  lawn,  as  the  season  determined.  On 
Sundays  I  saw  the  young  husbands  hieing  to 
church,  to  a  golf-links  somewhere,  to  tennis 
in  some  vacant  lot,  or  aiding  their  girlish  wives 
in  the  cheerfulest  fashion  imaginable  to  spray 
rose-bushes  or  to  drive  the  irrepressible  dande 
lion  from  the  lawn  of  its  delight. 

These  phenomena  interested  me  more  than 
I  can  say.  My  aim  was  not  wholly  sociological, 
for  not  only  did  I  wish  in  the  spirit  of  strictest 
scientific  inquiry  to  understand  just  how  all 
this  was  possible,  but  the  sentimental  aspect 
of  it  exercised  a  strange  fascination  upon  me. 
When  I  walked  these  new  streets  at  night  and 
saw  lamps  lighted  in  dozens  of  cheery  habita 
tions,  with  the  lord  and  lady  of  the  bungalow 
reading  or  talking  in  greatest  contentment; 
or  when  their  voices  drifted  out  to  me  from 
nasturtium-hung  verandas  on  summer  eve 
nings,  I  was  in  danger  of  ceasing  to  be  a 
philosopher  and  of  going  over  bodily  to  the 
sentimentalists.  Then,  the  scientific  spirit  mas 
tering,  I  vulgarly  haunted  the  doors  of  the 
adjacent  shops  and  communed  with  grocers* 
boys  and  drug  clerks,  that  I  might  gain  data 

[195] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

upon  which  to  base  speculations  touching  this 
species,  this  "group,"  which  presented  so  gal 
lant  a  front  in  a  world  where  bills  are  payable 
not  later  than  the  tenth  of  every  calendar 
month. 

"You  may  have  the  brown  bungalow  in 
Audubon  Road,  the  gray  one  in  Washington 
Hedge,  or  the  dark  green  one  in  Landor  Lane. 
Take  any  one  you  like;  they  all  offer  about 
the  same  accommodations,"  said  the  architect. 
"You  can  put  such  rent  as  you  see  fit  in  the 
nearest  squirrel  box,  and  if  you  meet  an  in 
tending  purchaser  with  our  prospectus  in  his 
hand  I  expect  you  to  take  notice  and  tease 
him  to  buy.  We've  always  got  another  bunga 
low  somewhere,  so  you  won't  be  thrown  in 
the  street." 

I  chose  Landor  Lane  for  a  variety  of  reasons. 
There  were  as  yet  only  three  houses  in  the 
street,  and  this  assured  a  degree  of  peace.  Many 
fine  forest  trees  stood  in  the  vacant  lots,  and 
a  number  had  been  suffered  to  remain  within 
the  parking  retained  between  sidewalk  and 
curb,  mitigating  greatly  the  harsh  lines  of  the 
new  addition.  But  I  think  the  deciding  factor 

[196] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

was  the  name  of  the  little  street.  Landor  had 
always  given  me  pleasure,  and  while  it  is  pos 
sible  that  a  residence  in  Huxley  Avenue  might 
have  been  more  suitable  for  a  seeker  of  truth, 
there  was  the  further  reflection  that  truth, 
touched  with  the  iridescent  glow  of  romance, 
need  suffer  nothing  from  contact  with  the  spirit 
of  Walter  Savage  Landor. 

Directly  opposite  my  green  bungalow  was 
a  dark  brown  one  flung  up  rather  high  above 
the  lane.  The  promoters  of  the  addition  had 
refrained  from  smoothing  out  the  landscape, 
so  that  the  brown  bungalow  was  about  twenty 
feet  above  the  street,  while  my  green  one  was 
reached  by  only  half  a  dozen  steps. 

On  the  day  that  I  made  my  choice  I  saw 
a  child  of  three  playing  in  the  grass  plot  be 
fore  the  brown  bungalow.  It  was  Saturday 
afternoon,  and  the  typical  young  freeholder 
was  doing  something  with  an  axe  near  the 
woodshed,  and  even  as  I  surveyed  the  scene 
the  domestic  picture  was  completed  by  the 
appearance  of  the  inevitable  young  woman, 
who  came  from  the  direction  of  the  trolley- 
terminus,  carrying  the  usual  neat  card-case  in 

[1973 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

her  hand.  Here  was  exactly  what  I  wanted— 
a  chance  to  study  at  close  hand  the  bungalow 
type,  and  yet,  Landor  Lane  was  so  quiet,  its 
trio  of  houses  so  distributed,  that  I  might  enjoy 
that  coveted  detachment  so  essential  to  con 
templative  observation  and  wise  judgments. 

"I've  forgotten,"  mused  the  architect,  as 
we  viewed  the  scene  together,  "whether  the 
chap  in  that  brown  bungalow  is  Redmond,  the 
patent  lawyer,  or  Manderson,  the  tile-grate 
man.  There's  a  baby  of  about  the  same  vintage 
at  both  houses.  If  that  isn't  Redmond  over 
there  showing  Gladstonian  prowess  with  the 
axe,  it's  Manderson.  Woman  with  child  and 
cart;  number  58;  West  Gallery;  artist  un 
known."  It  pleased  my  friend's  humor  to  quote 
thus  from  imaginary  catalogues.  "Well,  I  don't 
know  whether  those  are  the  Redmonds  or  the 
Mandersons;  but  come  to  think  of  it,  Redmond 
isn't  a  lawyer,  but  the  inventor  of  a  new  office 
system  by  which  profit  and  loss  are  computed 
hourly  by  a  device  so  simple  that  any  child 
may  operate  it.  A  man  of  your  cloistral  habits 
won't  care  about  the  neighbors,  but  I  hope 
that  chap  isn't  Redmond.  A  man  who  will 
[198] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

think  up  a  machine  like  that  isn't  one  you'd 
expose  perfectly  good  garden  hose  to,  on  dark 
summer  nights." 

ii 

A  Japanese  boy  who  was  working  his  way 
through  college  offered  to  assume  the  respon 
sibilities  of  my  housekeeping  for  his  board. 
Banzai  brought  to  the  task  of  cooking  the  deft 
hand  of  his  race.  He  undertook  the  purchase 
of  furniture  to  set  me  up  in  the  bungalow,  with 
out  asking  questions — in  itself  a  great  relief. 
In  a  week's  time  he  announced  that  all  was 
in  readiness  for  my  transfer,  so  that  I  made 
the  change  quite  casually,  without  other  im 
pedimenta  than  a  portfolio  and  a  suitcase. 

On  that  first  evening,  as  Banzai  served  my 
supper — he  was  a  past  master  of  the  omelet — 
I  enjoyed  a  peace  my  life  had  not  known  be 
fore.  In  collecting  material  for  my  earlier 
sketches  I  had  undeniably  experienced  many 
discomforts  and  annoyances;  but  here  was  an 
adventure  which  could  hardly  fail  to  prove 
pleasant  and  profitable. 

As  I  loafed  with  my  pipe  after  supper,  I  re- 

[  199] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

solved  to  make  the  most  of  my  good  fortune 
and  perfect  a  study  of  the  bungalow  as  an  ex 
pression  of  American  civilization  which  should 
be  the  final  word  on  that  enthralling  subject.  I 
was  myself,  so  to  speak,  a  bungaloyd — the 
owner  or  occupant  of  a  bungalow — and  while 
I  was  precluded  by  my  state  of  bachelorhood 
from  entering  fully  into  the  life  which  had  so 
aroused  my  curiosity,  I  was  nevertheless  con 
fident  that  I  should  be  able  to  probe  deeply  and 
sympathetically  into  the  secret  of  the  bunga 
low's  happiness. 

Having  arranged  my  books  and  papers  I 
sought  the  open.  Banzai  had  secured  some 
porch  furniture  of  a  rustic  pattern,  but  he  had 
neglected  to  provide  pillows,  and  as  the  chairs 
of  hickory  boughs  were  uncomfortable,  I 
strolled  out  into  the  lane.  As  I  stood  in  the 
walk,  the  door  of  the  brown  bungalow  opened 
and  a  man  came  forth  and  descended  to  the 
street.  It  was  a  clear  night  with  an  abundance 
of  stars,  and  the  slim  crescent  of  a  young  moon 
hung  in  the  west.  My  neighbor  struck  a  match 
and  drew  the  flame  into  his  pipe  in  four  or  five 
deliberate  inhalations.  In  the  match-flare  I 

[200] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

saw  his  face,  which  impressed  me  as  sombre, 
though  this  may  have  been  the  effect  of  his 
dark,  close-trimmed  beard.  He  stood  immov 
able  for  five  minutes  or  more,  then  strolled 
aimlessly  away  down  the  lane. 

Looking  up,  I  saw  a  green-shaded  lamp 
aglow  in  the  front  window  of  the  bungalow, 
and  almost  immediately  the  young  wife  opened 
the  door  and  came  out  hastily,  anxiously.  She 
ran  half-way  down  the  steps,  with  the  light 
of  the  open  door  falling  upon  her,  and  after 
a  hurried  glance  to  right  and  left  called  softly, 
"Tom!" 

"Tom,"  she  repeated  more  loudly;  then  she 
ran  back  into  the  house  and  reappeared,  fling 
ing  a  wrap  over  her  shoulders,  and  walked 
swiftly  away  in  the  direction  taken  by  the 
lord  of  the  bungalow. 

Could  it  be  possible,  I  pondered,  that  the 
happiness  I  had  attributed  to  bungalow  folk 
was  after  all  of  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made 
of  ?  There  had  been  almost  a  sob  in  that  second 
cry  of  "Tom!"  and  I  resented  it.  The  scene 
was  perfectly  set;  the  green-shaded  lamp  had 
been  lighted,  ready  for  that  communing  of 
[201  ] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

two  souls  which  had  so  deeply  moved  and  in 
terested  me  as  I  had  ranged  the  land  of  the 
bungalow;  yet  here  was  a  situation  which  rose 
blackly  in  my  imagination.  I  was  surprised  to 
find  how  quickly  I  took  sides  in  this  unhappy 
drama;  I  was  all  for  the  woman.  The  glimpse 
I  had  caught  of  her,  tripping  homeward  in 
the  lane,  swinging  her  card-case,  had  been 
wholly  pleasing;  and  I  recalled  the  joyous  quick 
rush  with  which  she  had  clasped  her  child.  I 
was  sure  that  Tom  was  a  monster,  eccentric, 
selfish,  indifferent.  There  had  been  a  tiff,  and 
he  had  gone  off  to  sulk  in  the  dark  like  a  wil 
ful,  perverse  child. 

I  was  patrolling  my  veranda  half  an  hour 
later,  when  I  heard  steps  and  then  voices  on 
the  walk  opposite,  and  back  they  came.  It  is 
a  woman's  way,  I  reflected,  to  make  all  the 
advances;  and  this  young  wife  had  captured 
the  runaway  and  talked  him  into  good  humor. 
A  moment  later  they  were  seated  beside  the 
table  in  the  living-room,  and  so  disposed  that 
the  lamp  did  not  obscure  them  from  each  other. 
She  was  reading  aloud,  and  occasionally  glanced 
up,  whether  to  make  sure  of  his  attention  or 

[202] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

to  comment  upon  the  book  I  did  not  know; 
and  when  it  occurred  to  me  that  it  was  neither 
dignified  nor  decent  to  watch  my  neighbors 
through  their  window,  I  went  indoors  and 
wrote  several  pages  of  notes  for  a  chapter  which 
I  now  felt  must  be  written,  on  "Bungalow 
Shadows." 

Manderson  was  the  name;  Banzai  made  sure 
of  this  at  the  grocer's.  As  I  took  the  air  of  the 
lane  the  next  morning  before  breakfast,  I  saw 
that  the  Redmonds  were  a  different  sort.  Red 
mond,  a  big  fellow,  with  a  loud  voice,  was  bid 
ding  his  wife  and  child  good-by.  The  youngster 
toddled  after  him,  the  wife  ran  after  the  child, 
and  there  was  much  laughter.  They  all  stopped 
to  inspect  me,  and  Redmond  introduced  him 
self  and  shook  hands,  with  the  baby  clutching 
his  knees.  He  presented  me  to  his  wife,  and 
they  cordially  welcomed  me  to  the  lane  to  the 
baby's  cooing  accompaniment.  They  restored 
me  to  confidence  in  the  bungalow  type;  no 
doubt  of  the  Redmonds  being  the  real  thing ! 


[203] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

III 

The  lady  of  the  brown  bungalow  was,  how 
ever,  far  more  attractive  than  her  sister  of  the 
red  one,  and  the  Mandersons  as  a  family  were 
far  more  appealing  than  the  Redmonds.  My 
note-book  filled  with  memoranda  touching  the 
ways  and  manners  of  the  Mandersons,  and 
most  of  these,  I  must  confess,  related  to  Mrs. 
Manderson.  She  was  exactly  the  type  I  sought, 
the  veritable  dea  ex  machina  of  the  bungalow 
world.  She  lived  a  good  deal  on  her  veranda, 
and  as  I  had  established  a  writing-table  on 
mine  I  was  able  to  add  constantly  to  my  notes 
by  the  mere  lifting  of  my  eyes.  I  excused 
my  impudence  in  watching  her  on  scientific 
grounds.  She  was  no  more  to  me  than  a  new 
bird  to  an  ornithologist,  or  a  strange  plant  to 
a  botanist. 

Occasionally  she  would  dart  into  the  house 
and  attack  an  upright  piano  that  stood  by  the 
broad  window  of  the  living-room.  I  could  see 
the  firm  clean  stroke  of  her  arms  as  she  played. 
Those  brilliant,  flashing,  golden  things  of 
Chopin's  she  did  wonderfully;  or  again  it  would 

[204] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

be  Schumann's  spirit  she  invoked.  Once  be 
gun,  she  would  run  on  for  an  hour,  and  Banzai 
would  leave  his  kitchen  and  crouch  on  our 
steps  to  listen.  She  appeared  at  times  quite 
fearlessly  with  a  broom  to  sweep  the  walk, 
and  she  seemed  to  find  a  childish  delight  in 
sprinkling  the  lawn.  Or  she  would  set  off,  basket 
in  hand,  for  the  grocer's,  and  would  return 
bearing  her  own  purchases  and  none  the  less 
a  lady  for  a'  that.  There  was  about  her  an  in 
definable  freshness  and  crispness.  I  observed 
with  awe  her  succession  of  pink  and  blue  shirt 
waists,  in  which  she  caught  and  diffused  the 
sun  like  a  figure  in  one  of  Benson's  pictures; 
and  when  she  danced  off  with  her  card-case 
in  a  costume  of  solid  white,  and  with  a  flappy 
white  hat,  she  was  not  less  than  adorable. 

Manderson  nodded  to  me  the  second  day,  a 
little  coldly,  as  we  met  in  the  walk;  and  there 
after  bowed  or  waved  a  hand  when  I  fell  under 
his  eye.  One  evening  I  heard  him  calling  her 
across  the  dusk  of  the  yard.  Her  name  was 
Olive,  and  nothing,  it  seemed  to  me,  was  ever 
more  fitting  than  that. 

One  morning  as  I  wrote  at  my  table  on  the 

[205] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

veranda  I  was  aroused  by  a  commotion  over 
the  way.  The  girl  of  all  work  appeared  in  the 
front  yard  screaming  and  wringing  her  hands, 
and  I  rushed  across  the  lane  to  learn  that  the 
water-heater  was  possessed  of  an  evil  spirit 
and  threatened  to  burst.  The  lady  of  the  bunga 
low  had  gone  to  town  and  the  peril  was  immi 
nent.  I  reversed  all  the  visible  valves,  in  that 
trustful  experimental  spirit  which  is  the  flower 
of  perfect  ignorance,  and  the  catastrophe  was 
averted.  I  returned  to  my  work,  became  ab 
sorbed,  and  was  only  aroused  by  a  tug  at  my 
smoking-jacket.  Beside  me  stood  the  Mander- 
son  baby,  extending  a  handful  of  dahlias !  Her 
manner  was  of  ambassadorial  gravity.  No 
word  was  spoken,  and  she  trotted  off,  labo 
riously  descended  my  steps,  and  toddled  across 
the  lane. 

Her  mother  waited  at  the  curb,  and  as  I 
bowed  in  my  best  manner,  holding  up  the 
dahlias,  she  called,  "Thank  you!"  in  the  most 
entrancing  of  voices.  Mr.  James  declares  that 
the  way  one  person  looks  at  another  may  be, 
in  effect,  an  incident;  and  how  much  more 
may  "Thank  you,"  flung  across  a  quiet  street, 


THE  LADY  OF  LAN  DOR  LANE 

have  the  weight  of  hours  of  dialogue  !  Her  voice 
was  precisely  the  voice  that  the  loveliest  of 
feminine  names  connotes,  suggesting  Tenny- 
sonian  harmonies  and  cadences,  and  murmur 
ing  waters  of 

"Sweet  Catullus's  all-but-island,  olive-silvery  Sirmio." 

A  bunch  of  dahlias  was  just  the  epistolary  form 
to  which  a  bungalow  lady  would  resort  in  com 
municating  with  a  gentleman  she  did  not  know. 
The  threatened  explosion  of  the  heater  had 
thus  served  to  introduce  me  to  my  neighbor, 
and  had  given  me  at  the  same  time  a  new  reve 
lation  of  her  sense  of  the  proprieties,  her  gra- 
ciousness,  and  charm.  In  my  visit  to  the  house 
I  had  observed  its  appointments  with  a  discreet 
but  interested  eye,  and  I  jotted  down  many  notes 
with  her  dahlias  on  the  table  before  me.  The 
soft  tints  of  the  walls,  the  well-chosen  Amer 
ican  rugs,  the  comfort  that  spoke  in  the  furni 
ture  reflected  a  consistent  taste.  There  was 
the  usual  den,  with  a  long  bench  piled  with 
cushions,  and  near  at  hand  a  table  where  a 
tray  of  smoker's  articles  was  hedged  in  with 
magazines,  and  there  were  books  neatly 

[207] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

shelved,  and  others,  lying  about,  testified  to 
familiar  use.  The  upright  piano,  by  the  win 
dow  of  my  frequent  contemplation,  bore  the 
imprimatur  of  one  of  the  most  reputable 
makers,  and  a  tall  rack  beside  it  was  filled  with 
music.  Prone  on  the  player's  seat  lay  a  doll — 
a  fact  I  noted  with  satisfaction,  as  evidence 
of  the  bungalow  baby's  supremacy  even  where 
its  mother  is  a  veritable  reincarnation  of  St. 
Cecilia. 

The  same  evening  Manderson  came  home 
in  haste  and  departed  immediately  with  a 
suitcase.  I  had  hoped  that  he  would  follow 
the  dahlias  in  person  to  discuss  the  housemaid's 
embarrassments  with  the  plumbing  and  bring 
me  within  the  arc  of  his  domestic  circle,  but 
such  was  not  to  be  the  way  of  it. 

He  was  gone  three  days,  and  while  the  lady 
of  the  bungalow  now  bowed  to  me  once  daily 
across  the  lane,  our  acquaintance  progressed 
no  further.  Nor,  I  may  add,  did  my  work  move 
forward  according  to  the  schedule  by  which  it 
is  my  habit  to  write.  I  found  myself  scribbling 
verses — a  relaxation  I  had  not  indulged  in 
since  my  college  days.  I  walked  much,  sur- 

[208] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

veying  the  other  streets  in  Sherwood  Forest 
Addition  and  gloomily  comparing  them  with 
Landor  Lane  to  their  disadvantage.  I  tramped 
the  shore  of  the  little  lake  and  saw  her  there 
once  and  again,  at  play  with  the  baby.  She 
and  Mrs.  Redmond  exchanged  visits  frequently 
with  bungalow  informality.  One  afternoon  half 
a  dozen  young  women  appeared  for  tea  on  the 
deep  veranda,  and  the  lane  was  gay  with 
laughter.  They  were  the  ladies  of  the  surround 
ing  bungalow  district,  and  their  party  was  the 
merriest.  I  wondered  whether  she  had  waited 
for  a  day  when  her  husband  was  absent  to 
summon  these  sisters.  It  was  a  gloomy  fate 
that  had  mated  her  with  a  melancholy  soul  like 
Manderson. 

IV 

I  had  written  several  couplets  imploring  the 
protection  of  the  gods  for  the  Lady  of  the  Lane, 
and  these  I  had  sketched  upon  a  large  sheet 
of  cardboard  the  better  to  scrutinize  them. 
And  thereby  hangs  the  saddest  of  revelations. 
My  friend  the  architect  had  sent  me  a  number 
of  advertisements  with  a  request  that  I  should 
[209] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

persuade  Banzai  to  attach  them  to  the  ad 
jacent  landscape.  Returning  from  a  tramp  I 
beheld  Olive  (as  I  shall  not  scruple  to  call  her) 
studying  a  placard  on  a  telephone-post  in  the 
lane  a  little  beyond  her  bungalow.  It  struck 
me  as  odd  that  she  should  be  so  interested  in 
a  mere  advertisement  of  bungalows,  when  she 
was  already  cosily  domiciled  in  the  prettiest 
one  the  addition  boasted.  She  laughed  aloud, 
then  turned  guardedly,  saw  me,  and  marched 
demurely  home  without  so  much  as  glancing 
a  second  time  in  my  direction. 

After  she  had  tripped  up  the  steps  and 
vanished  I  saw  the  grievous  thing  that  Banzai 
had  done.  By  some  inadvertence  he  had  thrust 
the  card  bearing  my  verses  among  the  advertise 
ments,  and  with  all  the  posts  and  poles  and 
tree-boxes  in  Christendom  to  choose  from,  he 
had  with  unconscious  malevolence  nailed  my 
couplets  to  the  telephone-pole  nearest  the  Man- 
derson  bungalow.  It  was  an  unpardonable 
atrocity,  the  enormity  of  which  I  shall  not 
extenuate  by  suppressing  the  verses: 

"Spirits  that  guard  all  lovely  things 
Bend  o'er  this  path  thy  golden  wings. 

[210] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

Shield  it  from  storms  and  powers  malign: 
Make  stars  and  sun  above  it  shine. 

May  none  pass  here  on  evil  bent: 
Bless  it  to  hearts  of  good  intent, 

And  when  (like  some  bright  catch  of  song 
One  hears  but  once  though  waiting  long) 

Lalage  suddenly  at  the  door 
Views  the  adoring  landscape  o'er, 

O  swift  let  friendly  winds  attend 
And  faithful  to  her  errands  bend ! 

Then  when  adown  the  lane  she  goes 
Make  leap  before  her  vine  and  rose ! 

From  elfin  land  bring  Ariel 

To  walk  beside  and  guard  her  well. 

Defend  her,  pray,  from  faun  and  gnome 
Till  through  the  Lane  she  wanders  home!" 

It  was  bad  enough  to  apostrophize  my 
neighbor's  wife  in  song;  but  to  publish  my 
infamy  to  the  world  was  an  even  more  grievous 
sin.  I  tore  the  thing  down,  bore  it  home,  and 
thrust  it  into  the  kitchen  range  before  the  eyes 
of  the  contrite  Banzai.  Across  the  way  Olive 
played,  and  I  thought  there  was  mockery  in 
her  playing. 

[211] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

Realism  is,  after  all,  on  much  better  terms 
with  Romance  than  the  critics  would  have  us 
believe.  If  Manderson  had  not  thawed  suf 
ficiently  to  borrow  the  realistic  monkey-wrench 
which  Banzai  used  on  our  lawn-mower,  and  if 
Olive  had  not  romantically  returned  it  a  week 
later  with  a  card  on  which  she  had  scribbled 
"Many  apologies  for  the  long  delay,"  I  might 
never  have  discoveed  that  she  was  not  in  fact 
Manderson's  wife  but  his  sister.  Hers  was  the 
neatest,  the  best-bred  of  cards,  and  bore  the 
name  incontrovertibly 


Miss  OLIVE  MANDERSON 

44  LANDOR   LANE 


I  throw  this  to  the  realists  that  they  may 
chortle  over  it  in  the  way  of  their  grim  fra 
ternity.  Were  I  cursed  with  the  least  taint  of 
romanticism  I  should  not  disclose  her  maiden 
state  at  this  point,  but  hold  it  for  stirring  dra 
matic  use  at  the  moment  when,  believing  her 

[212] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR   LANE 

to  be  the  wife  of  the  mournful  tile-grate 
man,  I  should  bid  her  good-by  and  vanish  for 
ever. 

The  moment  that  card  reacned  me  by  the 
hand  of  her  housemaid  she  was  playing  a 
Chopin  polonaise,  and  I  was  across  the  lane 
and  reverently  waiting  at  the  door  when  the 
last  chord  sounded.  It  was  late  on  an  after 
noon  at  the  threshold  of  October,  but  not  too 
cool  for  tea  al  fresco.  When  the  wind  blew  chili 
from  the  lake  she  disappeared,  and  returned 
with  her  hands  thrust  into  the  pockets  of  a 
white  sweater. 

It  was  amazing  how  well  we  got  on  from 
the  first.  She  explained  herself  in  the  fewest 
words.  Her  brother's  wife  had  died  two  years 
before,  and  she  had  helped  to  establish  a  home 
for  him  in  the  hope  of  mitigating  his  loneliness. 
She  spoke  of  him  and  the  child  with  the  ten- 
derest  consideration.  He  had  been  badly  broken 
by  his  wife's  death,  and  was  given  to  brooding. 
I  accused  myself  bitterly  for  having  so  grossly 
misjudged  him  as  to  think  him  capable  of  harsh 
ness  toward  the  fair  lady  of  his  bungalow.  He 
came  while  I  still  sat  there  and  greeted  me 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

amiably,  and  when  I  left  we  were  established 
on  the  most  neighborly  footing. 

Thenceforth  my  work  prospered.  Olive  re 
vealed,  with  the  nicest  appreciation  and  under 
standing  of  my  needs,  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  suburban  bungalowhood.  The  deficiencies 
of  the  trolley  service,  the  uncertainties  of  the 
grocer's  delivery  she  described  in  the  aptest 
phrases,  her  buoyant  spirit  making  light  of  all 
such  vexations. 

The  manifold  resources  and  subterfuges  of 
bungalow  housekeeping  were  unfolded  with 
the  drollest  humor.  The  eternal  procession  of 
cooks,  the  lapses  of  the  neighborhood  hired  man, 
the  fitfulness  of  the  electric  light — all  such 
tragedies  were  illuminated  with  her  cheery 
philosophy.  The  magazine  article  that  I  had 
planned  expanded  into  a  discerning  study  of 
the  secret  which  had  baffled  and  lured  me,  as  to 
the  flowering  of  the  bungalow  upon  the  rough 
edges  of  the  urban  world.  The  aspirations  ex 
pressed  by  the  upright  piano,  the  perambulator, 
the  new  book  on  the  arts-and-crafts  table,  the 
card-case  borne  through  innumerable  quiet  lanes 
— all  such  phenomena  Olive  elucidated  for  my 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR   LANE 

instruction.  The  shrewd  economies  that  ex 
plained  the  occasional  theatre  tickets;  the  in 
cubator  that  robbed  the  grocer  to  pay  the 
milliner;  the  home-plied  needle  that  accounted 
for  the  succession  of  crisp  shirt  waists — into 
these  and  many  other  mysteries  Olive  initiated 
me. 

Sherwood  Forest  suddenly  began  to  boom, 
and  houses  were  in  demand.  My  architect  friend 
threatened  me  with  eviction,  and  to  avert  the 
calamity  I  signed  a  contract  of  purchase,  which 
bound  me  and  my  heirs  and  assigns  forever  to 
certain  weekly  payments;  and,  blithe  oppor 
tunist  that  I  am,  I  based  a  chapter  on  this 
circumstance,  with  the  caption  "Five  Dollars 
a  Month  for  Life."  I  wrote  from  notes  supplied 
by  Olive  a  dissertation  on  "The  Pursuit  of  the 
Lemon" — suggested  by  an  adventure  of  her 
own  in  search  of  the  fruit  of  the  citrus  limonum 
for  use  in  garnishing  a  plate  of  canned  salmon 
for  Sunday  evening  tea. 

Inspired  by  the  tender,  wistful  autumn  days 
I  wrote  verses  laboriously,  and  boldly  hung 
them  in  the  lane  in  the  hope  of  arresting  my 
Rosalind's  eye.  One  of  these  (tacked  to  a  tree 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

in  a  path  by  the  lake)  I  here  insert  to  illustrate 
the  plight  to  which  she  had  brought  me: 

"At  eve  a  line  of  golden  light 
Hung  low  along  the  west; 
The  first  red  maple  bough  shone  bright 
Upon  the  woodland's  breast. 

The  wind  blew  keen  across  the  lake, 
A  wave  mourned  on  the  shore; 

Earth  knew  an  instant  some  heartache 
Unknown  to  earth  before. 

The  wandering  ghosts  of  summers  gone 
Watched  shore  and  wood  and  skies; 

The  night  fell  like  a  shadow  drawn 
Across  your  violet  eyes." 


Olive  suffered  my  rhyming  with  the  same 
composure  with  which  she  met  the  unpreluded 
passing  of  a  maid  of  all  work,  or  the  ill-natured 
smoking  of  the  furnace  on  the  first  day  it  was 
fired.  She  preferred  philosophy  to  poetry,  and 
borrowed  Nietzsche  from  the  branch  library. 
She  persuaded  me  that  the  ladies  of  the  bunga 
lows  are  all  practical  persons,  and  so  far  as  I 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

am  concerned,  Olive  fixed  the  type.  It  had 
seemed  to  me,  as  I  viewed  her  comings  and 
goings  at  long  range,  that  she  commanded 
infinite  leisure;  and  yet  her  hours  were  crowded 
with  activities.  I  learned  from  her  that  cooks 
with  diplomas  are  beyond  the  purses  of  most 
bungalow  housekeepers;  and  as  Olive's  brother's 
digestive  apparatus  was  most  delicate  she  as 
sumed  the  responsibility  of  composing  cakes 
and  pastries  for  his  pleasure.  With  tea  (and 
we  indulged  in  much  teaing)  she  gave  me 
golden  sponge-cake  of  her  own  making  which 
could  not  have  failed  to  delight  the  severest 
Olympian  critic.  Her  sand  tarts  established  a 
new  standard  for  that  most  delectable  item  of 
the  cook-book.  She  ironed  with  her  own  hands 
the  baby's  more  fragile  frocks.  Nor  did  such 
manual  employments  interfere  in  any  way 
whatever  with  the  delicacy  of  her  touch  upon 
the  piano.  She  confided  to  me  that  she  made 
a  practice  of  reviewing  French  verbs  at  the 
ironing-board  with  a  grammar  propped  before 
her.  She  belonged  to  a  club  which  was  studying 
Carlyle's  French  Revolution,  and  she  was  secre 
tary  of  a  musical  society — formed  exclusively 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

of  the  mistresses  of  bungalows,  who  had  nobly 
resolved  to  devote  the  winter  to  the  study  of 
the  works  of  John  Sebastian  Bach. 

It  gradually  became  clear  that  the  romance 
of  the  American  bungalow  was  reinforced  and 
strengthened  by  a  realism  that  was  in  itself 
romance,  and  I  was  immensely  stimulated  by 
this  discovery.  It  was  refreshing  to  find  that 
there  are,  after  all,  no  irreconcilable  differences 
between  a  pie  well  made  and  a  Chopin  polonaise 
well  played.  Those  who  must  quibble  over  the 
point  may  file  a  demurrer,  if  they  so  please, 
with  the  baby  asleep  in  the  perambulator  on 
the  nearest  bungalow  veranda,  and  the  child, 
awaking,  will  overrule  it  with  a  puckered  face 
and  a  cry  that  brings  mama  on  the  run  with 
Carlyle  in  her  hand. 

VI 

Olive  was  twenty-five.  Twenty-five  is  the 
standard  age,  so  to  speak,  of  bungalow  matrons. 
My  closest  scrutiny  has  failed  to  discover  one 
a  day  older.  It  is  too  early  for  any  one  to  fore 
cast  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  bungalow.  The 

[218] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

bungalow  speaks  for  youth,  and  whether  it  will 
survive  as  an  architectural  type,  or  whether 
those  hopeful  young  married  persons  who  trust 
ingly  kindle  their  domestic  altars  in  bungalow 
fireplaces  will  be  found  there  in  contentment  at 
fifty,  is  not  for  this  writing.  What  did  strike 
me  was  the  fact  that  Olive,  being  twenty-five, 
was  an  anomaly  as  a  bungalow  lady  by  reason 
of  her  unmarriedness.  Her  domesticity  was 
complete,  her  efficiency  indisputable,  her  charm 
ineffable;  and  it  seemed  that  here  was  a  chance 
to  perfect  a  type  which  I,  with  my  strong  scien 
tific  bent,  could  not  suffer  to  pass.  By  the  mere 
process  of  changing  the  name  on  her  visiting 
card,  and  moving  from  a  brown  to  a  green  bun 
galow,  she  might  become  the  perfect  represen 
tation  of  the  most  interesting  and  delightful 
type  of  American  women.  Half  of  my  study 
of  bungalow  life  was  finished,  and  a  publisher 
to  whom  I  submitted  the  early  chapters  re 
turned  them  immediately  with  a  contract, 
whose  terms  were  in  all  ways  generous,  so 
that  I  was  able  to  view  the  future  in  that 
jaunty  confidence  with  which  young  folk 
intrust  their  fate  to  the  bungalow  gods. 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

I  looked  up  from  my  writing-table,  which 
the  chill  air  had  driven  indoors,  and  saw  Olive 
on  her  lawn  engaged  in  some  mysterious  oc 
cupation.  She  was  whistling  the  while  she 
dabbed  paint  with  a  brush  and  a  sophisticated 
air  upon  the  bruised  legs  of  the  baby's  high 
chair. 

At  my  approach  Romance  nudged  Realism. 
Or  maybe  it  was  Realism  that  nudged  Romance. 
I  cannot  see  that  it  makes  the  slightest  differ 
ence,  one  way  or  another,  on  whose  initiative 
I  spoke:  let  it  suffice  that  I  did  speak.  Realism 
and  Romance  tripped  away  and  left  me  alone 
with  the  situation.  When  I  had  spoken  Olive 
rose,  viewed  her  work  musingly,  with  head 
slightly  tilted,  and  still  whistling  touched  the 
foot-rest  of  the  baby  chair  lingeringly  with  the 
paint-brush.  Those  neat  cans  of  prepared  paint 
which  place  the  most  fascinating  of  joys  within 
the  range  of  womankind  are  in  every  well- 
regulated  bungalow  tool-closet — and  another 
chapter  for  my  book  began  working  in  my 
subconsciousness. 

A  little  later  Romance  and  Realism  returned 
and  stood  to  right  and  left  of  us  by  the  living- 
[220] 


THE  LADY  OF  LANDOR  LANE 

room  fire.  Realism,  in  the  outward  form  of 
W.  D.  H.,  winked  at  Romance  as  represented 
by  R.  L.  S.  I  observed  that  W.  D.  H.,  in  a 
pepper-and-salt  business  suit,  played  with  his 
eye-glasses;  R.  L.  S.,  in  a  velvet  jacket,  toyed 
with  his  dagger  hilt. 

Olive  informed  me  that  her  atrabilious 
brother  was  about  to  marry  a  widow  in  Emer 
son  Road,  so  there  seemed  to  be  no  serious 
obstacle  to  the  immediate  perfecting  of  Olive 
as  a  type  by  a  visit  to  the  young  clergyman 
in  the  white  bungalow  in  Channing  Lane,  on 
the  other  side  of  Sherwood  Forest  Addition. 
Romance  and  Realism  therefore  quietly  with 
drew  and  left  us  to  discuss  the  future. 

"I  think,"  said  Olive  with  a  far-away  look 
in  her  eyes,  "that  there  should  be  a  box  of 
geraniums  on  our  veranda  rail  next  summer, 
and  that  a  hen-house  could  be  built  back  of 
the  coal  shed  without  spoiling  the  looks  of  the 
yard." 

As  I  saw  no  objection  whatever  to  these 
arrangements,  we  took  the  baby  for  a  walk, 
met  Tom  at  the  car,  and  later  we  all  dined 
together  at  the  brown  bungalow.  I  seem  to 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

recall  that  there  was  roast  fowl  for  dinner,  a 
salad  with  the  smoothest  of  mayonnaise,  canned 
apricots,  and  chocolate  layer  cake,  and  a  Schu 
mann  programme  afterward. 


[222] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH  VOTE? 

[1920] 

THE  talk  on  the  veranda  had  been  pro 
longed,  and  only  my  old  friend  Smith, 
smoking  in  meditative  silence,  had  re 
fused  to  contribute  to  our  discussion  of  the 
men  and  the  issues.  Between  campaigns  Smith 
is  open-minded  on  all  matters  affecting  the 
body  politic.  Not  infrequently  his  views  are 
marked  by  a  praiseworthy  independence.  Smith 
has  brains;  Smith  thinks.  A  Republican,  he 
criticises  his  party  with  the  utmost  freedom; 
and  when  sorely  tried  he  renounces  it  with  a 
superb  gesture  of  disdain.  But  on  election  day, 
in  a  mood  of  high  consecration,  he  unfailingly 
casts  his  ballot  for  the  Republican  nominee. 
A  week  earlier  he  may  have  declared  in  the 
most  convincing  manner  that  he  would  not 
support  the  ticket;  and  under  extreme  prov 
ocation  I  have  known  him  to  threaten  to  leave 
the  Republican  fold  for  all  time. 

Party  loyalty  is  one  of  the  most  powerful 
factors  in  the  operation  of  our  democracy,  and 
[223] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

it  has  its  special  psychology,  to  which  only  a 
Josiah  Royce  could  do  full  justice.  Smith  really 
thinks  that  he  will  bolt;  but  when  it  comes  to 
the  scratch  an  influence  against  which  he  is 
powerless  stays  his  hand  when  he  is  alone  in 
the  voting  booth  with  his  conscience  and  his 
God.  Later,  when  gently  reminded  of  this  mood 
of  disaffection,  he  snarls  that,  when  it  comes 
down  to  brass  tacks,  any  Republican  is  better 
than  any  Democrat,  anyhow — a  fragment  of 
philosophy  that  is  the  consolation  of  great 
numbers  of  Smiths. 

Smith,  as  I  was  saying,  had  refrained  from 
participating  in  our  talk  on  that  August  night 
where  the  saltless  sea  complained  upon  the 
beach  and  the  pines  took  counsel  of  the  stars. 
Then,  as  the  party  broke  up,  Smith  flung  his 
cigar  into  Lake  Michigan  and  closed  the  dis 
cussion  by  remarking  with  a  despairing  sigh — 

"Well,  either  way,  the  people  lose!" 

I 

Smith  prides  himself  on  his  ability  to  get 
what  he  wants  when  he  wants  it — in  every 
thing  but  politics.  In  all  else  that  pertains  to 

[224] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

his  welfare  Smith  is  informed,  capable,  and 
efficient.  In  his  own  affairs  he  tells  the  other 
fellow  where  to  get  off,  and  if  told  he  can't  do 
a  thing  he  proceeds  at  once  to  do  it  and  to  do  it 
well.  It  is  only  in  politics  that  his  efforts  are 
futile  and  he  takes  what  is  "handed  him." 
Under  strong  provocation  he  will,  in  the  manner 
of  a  dog  in  the  highway,  run  barking  after 
some  vehicle  that  awakens  his  ire;  but  finding 
himself  unequal  to  the  race,  he  meekly  trots 
back  to  his  own  front  yard.  If  the  steam  roller 
runs  over  him  and  the  self-respect  is  all  but 
mashed  out  of  him,  he  picks  himself  up  and 
retires  to  consider  it  yet  again.  He  has  learned 
nothing,  except  that  by  interposing  himself 
before  a  machine  of  superior  size  and  weight 
he  is  very  likely  to  get  hurt;  and  this  he  knew 
before. 

Smith  and  I  are  in  the  north  woods  thirty- 
five  miles  from  a  telegraph  instrument,  where 
it  is  possible  to  ponder  great  questions  with  a 
degree  of  detachment.  Loafing  with  Smith  is 
one  of  the  most  profitable  things  I  do;  he  is 
the  best  of  fellows,  and,  as  our  lives  have  run 
parallel  from  school-days  with  an  unbroken 

[225] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

intimacy,  we  are  thoroughly  familiar  with  each 
other's  manner  of  thought.  What  I  am  setting 
down  here  is  really  a  condensed  report  of  our 
talks.  Just  where  Smith  leaves  off  and  I  begin 
doesn't  matter,  for  we  speak  the  same  language 
of  the  Ancient  Brotherhood  of  the  Average 
Man.  Smith  is  a  Republican;  I  am  a  Democrat. 
We  have  "gone  to  the  mat"  in  many  campaigns, 
each  valiantly  defending  his  party  and  its 
heroes.  But,  chumming  together  in  August, 
1920,  the  punch  had  gone  out  of  us.  We  talked 
of  men  and  issues,  but  not  with  our  old  fervor. 
At  first  we  were  both  shy  of  present-day  mat 
ters,  and  disposed  to  "sidle  up"  to  the  imme 
diate  situation — to  reach  it  by  reluctant,  tan 
gential  approaches,  as  though  we  were  strangers, 
wary  of  wounding  each  other's  feelings. 

We  mean  to  keep  smiling  about  this  whole 
business.  We  Americans  seem  destined  to  rock 
dizzily  on  the  brink  of  many  precipices  without 
ever  quite  toppling  over.  We  have  lived  through 
wars  and  rumors  of  wars,  and  have  escaped 
pestilence  and  famine,  and  we  are  deeply  grate 
ful  that  the  present  campaign  lays  so  light  a 
tax  upon  the  emotions.  The  republic  isn't  go- 

[226] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

ing  to  perish,  no  matter  who's  elected.  One 
thing  is  certain,  however,  and  that  is  that  this 
time  we — that  is,  Smith  and  I — are  not  going 
to  be  jostled  or  pushed. 

The  other  day  we  interviewed  an  Indian — 
whether  untaxed  or  enrolled  at  the  receipt  of 
custom  we  didn't  ascertain.  Smith  asked  him 
whether  he  was  for  Cox  or  Harding,  and  the 
rightful  heir  to  all  the  territory  in  sight,  inter 
preting  our  courteous  inquiry  in  a  restricted 
tribal  rather  than  a  national  spirit  replied, 
"No  whisk."  He  thought  we  were  deputy 
sheriffs  looking  for  boot-leggers.  Even  at  that, 
Smith  held  "no  whisk"  to  be  the  most  intel 
ligent  answer  he  had  as  yet  received  to  his 
question. 

Smith  nearly  upset  the  canoe  one  morning 
as  he  turned  suddenly  to  demand  fiercely: 
"What's  this  campaign  all  about  anyhow?" 
This  was  a  dismaying  question,  but  it  pre 
cipitated  a  fortnight  of  reminiscences  of  the 
changing  fortunes  of  parties  and  of  battles  long 
ago,  with  the  usual  profitless  palaver  as  to 
whether  the  giants  of  other  days  were  really 
bigger  and  nobler  than  those  of  the  present. 
[227] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

We  decided,  of  course,  that  they  were,  having 
arrived  at  that  time  of  life  when  pygmies  loom 
large  in  the  twilight  shades  of  vanishing  per 
spectives.  The  recuperative  power  of  parties 
kept  us  interested  through  several  evenings. 
It  seemed  a  miracle  that  the  Democratic  party 
survived  the  Civil  War.  We  talked  much  of 
Cleveland,  speaking  of  him  wistfully,  as  the 
habit  now  is — of  his  courage  and  bluff  honesty. 
In  generous  mood  we  agreed  that  Mr.  Bryan 
had  at  times  rendered  meritorious  service  to 
his  country,  and  that  it  was  a  good  thing  to 
encourage  such  evangelists  occasionally  to  give 
the  kettle  a  vigorous  stirring  up.  The  brilliant 
qualities  as  well  as  the  many  irritating  char 
acteristics  of  Colonel  Roosevelt  were  dwelt 
upon,  and  we  readily  and  amiably  concluded 
that  many  pages  of  American  history  would 
be  dull  without  him.  He  knew  what  America 
is  all  about,  and  that  is  something.  We  lamented 
the  disheartening  circumstance  that  in  the 
very  nature  of  our  system  of  political  manage 
ment  there  must  always  be  men  of  first-rate 
capacity  who  can  never  hope  to  win  the  highest 
place — men,  for  example,  of  indubitable  wis- 
[228] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

dom,  character,  and  genius,  like  George  F. 
Edmunds,  Elihu  Root,  and  Judge  Gray  of 
Delaware. 

"When  I've  got  a  place  to  fill  in  my  busi 
ness,"  said  Smith,  "I  pick  out  a  man  Fm  dead 
sure  can  handle  it;  I  can't  afford  to  experiment 
with  fakers  and  amateurs.  But  when  it  comes 
to  choosing  a  mayor  in  my  town  or  a  President 
of  the  United  States,  I've  got  to  take  what  I 
can  get." 

There  is  no  justification  for  the  party  sys 
tem,  unless  the  major  parties  are  alert  and 
honest  in  criticism  and  exercise  a  restraining 
influence  upon  each  other.  It  is  perfectly  legit 
imate  for  the  opposition  to  pick  out  all  the 
weak  spots  in  the  record  of  an  administration 
and  make  the  most  of  them.  The  rules  of  good 
sportsmanship  do  not,  unfortunately,  apply  in 
politics.  With  all  our  insistence  as  a  nation 
upon  fair  play,  we  don't  practise  our  greatest 
game  in  that  spirit.  It  was  not,  I  should  say, 
until  after  Mr.  Cleveland's  second  election 
that  the  Civil  War  ceased  to  color  political 
discussion.  Until  I  was  well  on  toward  man 
hood,  I  was  troubled  not  a  little  by  a  fear  that 
[229] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

the  South  would  renew  the  war,  so  continually 
was  the  great  struggle  of  the  sixties  brought 
fearsomely  to  the  attention,  even  in  local  con 
tests.  In  the  criticism  that  has  been  heaped 
upon  Mr.  Wilson's  administration  we  have 
been  reminded  frequently  that  he  has  been  far 
too  responsive  to  Southern  influence. 

The  violence  of  our  partisanship  is  respon 
sible  for  the  intrusion  of  ail  manner  of  ex 
traneous  matters  into  campaigns.  It  would 
seem  that  some  single  striking  issue  that 
touches  the  pocketbook,  like  the  tariff  or  silver, 
is  necessary,  if  the  electorate  is  to  be  thoroughly 
aroused.  Human  nature  in  a  democracy  is 
quite  what  it  is  under  any  other  form  of  gov 
ernment,  and  is  thoroughly  disposed  to  view 
all  matters  selfishly.  Shantung  and  Fiume  are 
too  remote  to  interest  the  great  number  of  us 
whose  club  is  the  corner  grocery.  Anything 
beyond  Main  Street  is  alien  to  our  interest. 
We'll  buy  food  for  the  starving  in  other  lands, 
but  that's  missionary  work,  not  politics.  Politics 
is  electing  our  township  ticket,  even  though 
Bill  Jones  does  beat  his  wife  and  is  bound  to 
make  a  poor  constable. 

[230] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

We  became  slightly  cynical  at  times,  in  the 
way  of  Americans  who  talk  politics  heart-to- 
heart.  The  national  convention,  where  there  is 
a  thrill  in  the  sonority  of  the  very  names  of 
the  far-flung  commonwealths  as  they  are  re 
cited  on  roll-call,  is,  on  the  face  of  it,  a  glorious 
expression  of  democracy  at  work.  But  in  actual 
operation  every  one  knows  that  a  national 
convention  is  only  nominally  representative. 
The  delegates  in  their  appointed  places  are  not 
free  and  independent  American  citizens,  as 
sembled,  as  we  would  believe,  to  exercise  their 
best  judgment  as  trustees  of  the  "folks  back 
home."  Most  of  them  owe  their  seats  to  the 
favor  of  a  district  or  State  boss;  from  the  mo 
ment  the  convention  opens  they  are  the  play 
things  of  the  super-bosses,  who  plan  in  advance 
every  step  in  the  proceedings. 

Occasionally  there  are  slips:  the  ringmaster 
cracks  his  whip,  confident  that  the  show  will 
proceed  according  to  programme,  only  to  be 
embarrassed  by  some  irresponsible  performer 
who  refuses  to  "take"  the  hoops  and  hurdles 
in  the  prescribed  order.  In  other  terms,  some 
absurd  person  may  throw  a  wrench  into  a  per- 


THE   MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

fectly  functioning  machine  and  change  the 
pattern  it  has  been  set  to  weave.  Such  sabotage 
calls  for  a  high  degree  of  temerariousness,  and 
cannot  be  recommended  to  ambitious  young 
patriots  anxious  to  ingratiate  themselves  with 
the  powers  that  control.  At  Baltimore,  in  1912, 
Mr.  Bryan  did  the  trick — the  most  creditable 
act  of  his  career;  but  in  accepting  for  his  reward 
the  premiership  for  which  he  was  so  conspicu 
ously  unfit  he  foolishly  spoiled  his  record  and 
promptly  fulfilled  the  worst  predictions  of  his 
enemies. 

There  is  an  oft-quoted  saying  that  the  Demo 
cratic  party  always  may  be  relied  upon  to  do 
the  wrong  thing.  Dating  from  1876,  when  it  so 
nearly  won  the  presidency,  it  has  certainly  been 
the  victim  of  a  great  deal  of  bad  luck.  How 
ever,  remembering  the  blasting  of  many  Re 
publican  hopes  and  the  swift  passing  of  many 
Republican  idols — the  catastrophe  that  befell 
the  much-enduring  Blaine,  Mr.  Taft's  melan 
choly  adventures  with  the  presidency,  the 
Progressive  schism,  and  the  manner  in  which 
Mr.  Hughes  struck  out  with  the  bases  full — it 
may  hardly  be  said  that  the  gods  of  good-for- 

[232] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

tune  have  been  markedly  faithful  to  the  Re 
publicans.  Disappointments  are  inevitable;  but 
even  the  Grant  third-termers  and  the  followers 
of  the  Plumed  Knight  and  the  loyal  Bryan 
phalanx  outlived  their  sorrows.  The  supporters 
of  McAdoo  and  Palmer,  of  Wood  and  Lowden, 
appear  to  be  comfortably  seated  on  the  band 
wagon. 

Smith  was  an  ardent  supporter  of  General 
Wood's  candidacy,  and  we  sat  together  in  the 
gallery  of  the  convention  hall  at  Chicago  and 
observed  with  awe  and  admiration  the  manner 
in  which  the  general  received  the  lethal  thrust. 
The  noisy  demonstrations,  the  oratory,  the 
vociferous  whoops  of  the  galleries  touched  us 
not  at  all,  for  we  are  not  without  our  sophistica 
tion  in  such  exhibitions.  We  listened  with  plea 
sure  to  the  impromptus  of  those  stanch  veterans 
of  many  battles,  Messrs.  Depew  and  Cannon. 
At  other  times,  during  lulls  that  invited  oratory, 
we  heard  insistent  calls  for  Mr.  Beveridge;  but 
these  did  not  reach  the  ear,  or  failed  to  touch 
the  heart,  of  the  chairman.  The  former  senator 
from  Indiana  had  been  a  Progressive,  and  was 
not  to  be  trusted  before  a  convention  that 

[233] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

might,  with  a  little  stimulation,  have  trampled 
the  senatorial  programme  under  foot. 

We  knew  before  the  opening  prayer  was 
uttered  that,  when  the  delegates  chose  a  candi 
date,  it  would  be  only  a  pro  forma  confirmation 
of  a  selection  made  privately  by  half  a  dozen 
men,  devout  exponents  of  that  principle  of 
party  management  which  holds  that  the  wis 
dom  of  the  few  is  superior  to  the  silly  clamor 
of  the  many.  At  that  strategic  moment  when 
it  became  hazardous  to  indulge  the  deadlock 
further,  and  expediency  called  for  an  adjourn 
ment  that  the  scene  might  be  set  for  the  last 
act,  the  great  lords  quite  shamelessly  consulted 
in  full  view  of  the  spectators.  Messrs.  Lodge, 
Smoot,  Watson,  and  Crane,  hastily  reinforced 
by  Mr.  Herrick,  who,  aware  that  the  spotlight 
was  soon  to  be  turned  upon  Ohio,  ran  nimbly 
across  the  reporters'  seats  to  join  the  confer 
ence,  stood  there  in  their  majesty,  like  com 
placent  Olympians  preparing  to  confer  a  boon 
upon  mankind.  It  was  a  pretty  bit  of  drama. 
The  curtain  fell,  as  upon  a  second  act  where 
the  developments  of  the  third  are  fully  antic 
ipated  and  interest  is  buoyed  up  only  through 

[234] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

the  intermission  by  a  mild  curiosity  as  to  the 
manner  in  which  the  plot  will  be  worked  out. 
My  heart  warmed  to  the  enterprising  re 
porter  who  attached  himself  to  the  sacred  group 
for  a  magnificent  moment.  His  forcible  ejection 
only  emphasized  the  tensity  of  the  situation 
and  brought  into  clearer  relief  the  august  figures 
of  the  pontiffs,  who  naturally  resented  so  gross 
an  intrusion  upon  their  privacy. 

II 

The  other  night,  when  every  prospect  di 
vulged  by  the  moon's  soft  radiance  was  pleasing 
and  only  the  thought  of  man's  clumsy  handi 
work  was  vile,  Smith  shocked  me  by  remark 
ing: 

"This  patter  of  both  parties  about  the  dear 
people  makes  me  sick.  That  vox  populi  vox 
Dei  stuff  was  always  a  fake.  We  think  we're 
hearing  an  echo  from  heaven  when  it's  only 
a  few  bosses  in  the  back  room  of  a  hotel  some 
where  telling  us  what  we  ought  to  want."  We 
descanted  upon  this  at  length,  and  he  adduced 
much  evidence  in  support  of  his  contention. 

[2351 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

"What  we've  got  in  this  country,"  he  snorted, 
when  I  tried  to  reason  him  out  of  his  impious 
attitude,  "is  government  of  the  people  by  the 
bosses — for  the  bosses'  good.  The  people  are 
like  a  flock  of  silly  sheep  fattening  for  the  wolf, 
and  too  stupid  to  lift  their  eyes  from  the  grass 
to  see  him  galloping  down  the  hill.  They've 
got  to  be  driven  to  the  hole  in  the  wall  and 
pushed  through ! " 

He  was  mightily  pleased  when  I  told  him 
he  had  been  anticipated  by  many  eminent  au 
thorities  running  back  to  Isaiah  and  Plato. 

"Saving  remnant"  was  a  phrase  to  his  liking, 
and  he  kept  turning  it  over  and  investing  it 
with  modern  meanings.  Before  we  blew  out  the 
candles  we  were  in  accord  on  the  proposition 
that  while  we  have  government  by  parties  the 
parties  have  got  to  be  run  by  some  one;  what 
is  everybody's  business  being,  very  truly,  no 
body's  business.  Hence  the  development  of 
party  organizations  and  their  domination  by 
groups,  with  the  groups  themselves  deriving  in 
spiration  usually  from  a  single  head.  Under  the 
soothing  influence  of  these  bromides  Smith 
fell  to  sleep  denouncing  the  direct  primary. 

[236] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

"Instead  of  giving  the  power  to  the  people," 
he  muttered  drowsily,  "the  bloomin*  thing 
has  commercialized  office-seeking.  We're  selling 
nominations  to  the  highest  bidder.  If  I  were 
ass  enough  to  chase  a  United  States  senator- 
ship,  I  wouldn't  waste  any  time  on  the  people 
until  I'd  been  underwritten  by  a  few  strong 
banks.  And  if  I  won,  I'd  be  like  the  Dutchman 
who  said  he  was  getting  along  all  right,  only  he 
was  worried  because  he  had  to  die  and  go  to 
hell  yet.  It  would  be  my  luck  to  be  pinched  as 
a  common  felon,  and  to  have  my  toga  changed 
for  a  prison  suit  at  Leavenworth." 

Some  candidate  for  the  doctorate,  hard  put 
for  a  subject,  might  find  it  profitable  to  pro 
duce  a  thesis  on  American  political  phraseology. 
As  a  people  we  are  much  addicted  to  felicitous 
combinations  of  words  that  express  large  ideas 
in  the  smallest  possible  compass.  Not  only  does 
political  wisdom  lend  itself  well  to  condensa 
tion,  but  the  silliest  fallacy  will  carry  far  if 
knocked  into  a  fetching  phrase.  How  rich  in 
its  connotations  even  to-day  is  the  old  slogan, 
"Tippecanoe  and  Tyler  too"  !  and  many  others 
equally  illuminative  of  a  period  might  be  dug 

[237] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

out  of  the  records  from  the  beginning  of  our 
history,  including  "the  tariff  is  a  tax,"  "the 
full  dinner-pail,"  down  to  "he  kept  us  out  of 
war."  A  telling  phrase  or  a  catchword  is 
enormously  persuasive  and  convincing — the 
shrewdest  possible  advertisement. 

There  is  no  way  of  knowing  how  many  of 
our  hundred  millions  ever  read  a  national  plat 
form,  but  I  will  hazard  the  guess  that  not  more 
than  twenty-five  per  cent  have  perused  the 
platforms  of  1920  or  will  do  so  before  election 
day.  The  average  voter  is  content  to  accept 
the  interpretations  and  laudatory  comment  of 
his  party  paper,  with  its  assurance  that  the 
declaration  of  principles  and  purposes  is  in 
keeping  with  the  great  traditions  of  the  grand 
old  party.  It  is  straining  Smith's  patriotism 
pretty  far  to  ask  him  to  read  a  solid  page  of 
small  type,  particularly  when  he  knows  that 
much  of  it  is  untrue  and  most  of  it  sheer  bunk. 
Editorial  writers  and  campaign  orators  read 
platforms  perforce;  but  to  Smith  they  are 
fatiguing  to  the  eye  and  a  weariness  to  the 
spirit.  The  primary  qualification  for  member 
ship  on  a  platform  committee  is  an  utter  lack 

[238] 


HOW,  THEN,    SHOULD  SMITH    VOTE? 

— there  must  be  no  question  about  it — of  a 
sense  of  humor.  The  League  of  Nations  plank 
of  the  Republican  platform  is  a  refutation  of 
the  fallacy  that  we  are  a  people  singularly 
blessed  with  humor.  We  could  ask  no  more 
striking  proof  of  the  hypnotic  power  of  a  party 
name  than  the  acceptance  of  this  plank,  sol 
emnly  sawed,  trimmed,  and  painted  red,  white, 
and  blue,  in  the  committe-room,  and  received 
by  the  delegates  with  joyous  acclamation. 

Ill 

The  embarrassments  of  the  partisan  who  is 
challenged  to  explain  the  faith  that  is  in  him 
are  greatly  multiplied  in  this  year  of  grace. 
Considerable  literature  is  available  as  to  the 
rise  and  development  of  the  two  major  par 
ties,  but  a  student  might  exhaust  the  whole  of 
it  and  yet  read  the  Chicago  and  San  Francisco 
platforms  as  through  a  glass  darkly.  There  is 
a  good  deal  of  Jeffersonian  democracy  that  is 
extremely  difficult  to  reconcile  with  many  acts 
of  Mr.  Wilson.  The  partisan  who  tries  to  square 
his  Democracy  or  his  Republicanism  with  the 

[239] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

faith  he  inherited  from  his  grandfather  is 
doomed  to  a  severe  headache.  The  rope  that 
separates  the  elephant  from  the  donkey  in 
the  menagerie  marks  only  a  nominal  difference 
in  species:  they  eat  the  same  fodder  and,  when 
the  spectator's  back  is  turned,  slyly  wink  at 
each  other.  There  is  a  fine  ring  to  the  phrase 
"a  loyal  Republican"  or  "a  loyal  Democrat/' 
but  we  have  reached  a  point  of  convergence 
where  loyalty  is  largely  a  matter  of  tradition 
and  superstition.  What  Jefferson  said  on  a 
given  point,  or  what  Hamilton  thought  about 
something  else,  avails  little  to  a  Democrat  or 
a  Republican  in  these  changed  times.  We  talk 
blithely  of  fundamental  principles,  but  are 
still  without  the  power  to  visualize  the  leaders 
of  the  past  in  newly  developed  situations  of 
which  they  never  dreamed.  To  attempt  to 
interview  Washington  as  to  whether  he  in 
tended  his  warning  against  entangling  alliances 
to  apply  to  a  League  of  Nations  to  insure  the 
peace  of  the  world  is  ridiculous;  as  well  invoke 
Julius  Caesar's  opinion  of  present-day  questions 
of  Italian  politics. 

Delightful  and  inspiring  as  it  would  doubt- 

[240] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD   SMITH   VOTE? 

less  be,  we  can't  quite  trust  the  government 
to  the  counsels  of  the  ouija-board.  The  seats 
of  the  cabinet  or  of  the  supreme  bench  will 
hardly  be  filled  with  table-rapping  experts 
until  more  of  us  are  satisfied  of  the  authenticity 
of  the  communications  that  purport  to  be  post 
marked  oblivion.  We  quote  the  great  spirits 
of  the  past  only  when  we  need  them  to  give 
weight  and  dignity  to  our  own  views.  (Inci 
dentally,  a  ouija-board  opinion  fiom  John 
Marshall  as  to  the  propriety  of  tacking  a  police 
regulation  like  the  Eighteenth  Amendment  to 
the  Federal  Constitution  would  be  first-page 
stuff  for  the  newspapers.) 

Monroe  was  luckier  than  most  of  our  patri 
archs.  The  doctrine  associated  with  his  name 
is  jealously  treasured  by  many  patriotic  Amer 
icans  who  haven't  the  slightest  idea  of  the 
circumstances  that  called  it  forth;  but  to  men 
tion  it  in  a  discussion  of  international  affairs 
is  to  stamp  the  speaker  as  a  person  of  breeding, 
endowed  with  intellectual  gifts  of  the  highest 
order.  If  by  some  post-mortem  referendum  we 
could  "call  up"  Monroe  to  explain  just  how 
far  America  might  safely  go  in  the  defense  of 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

his  doctrine,  and  whether  it  could  be  advan 
tageously  extended  beyond  the  baths  of  all 
the  western  stars  to  keep  pace  with  such  an 
expansion  as  that  represented  by  the  Philip 
pines,  we  might  profit  by  his  answer — and 
again,  we  might  not. 

We  can't  shirk  our  responsibilities.  One  gen 
eration  can't  do  the  work  of  another.  In  the 
last  analysis  we've  got  to  stand  on  our  own  feet 
and  do  our  own  thinking.  The  Constitution 
itself  has  to  be  interpreted  over  and  over  again, 
and  even  amended  occasionally;  for  the  world 
does,  in  spite  of  all  efforts  to  stop  it,  continue 
to  move  right  along.  This  is  not  a  year  in  which 
either  of  the  major  parties  can  safely  harp  upon 
its  "traditional  policy."  There  are  skeletons  in 
both  closets  that  would  run  like  frightened 
rabbits  if  dragged  into  the  light  and  ordered 
to  solve  the  riddles  of  1920. 

The  critics  of  President  Wilson  have  dwelt 
much  on  the  vision  of  the  founders,  without 
conceding  that  he  too  may  be  blessed  with  a 
seer's  vision  and  the  tongue  of  prophecy.  To 
his  weaknesses  as  a  leader  I  shall  revert  later; 
but  his  high-mindedness  and  earnest  desire  to 

[242] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD   SMITH   VOTE? 

serve  the  nation  and  the  world  are  questioned 
only  by  the  most  buckramed  hostile  partisan, 
or  by  those  who  view  the  present  only  through 
the  eyes  of  dead  men. 


IV 

When  President  Wilson  read  his  war  message 
to  the  Congress  it  must  have  been  in  the  minds 
of  many  thousands  who  thrilled  to  the  news 
that  night,  that  a  trinity  of  great  American 
presidents  was  about  to  be  completed;  that  a 
niche  awaited  Mr.  Wilson  in  the  same  alcove 
with  Washington  and  Lincoln.  Many  who 
were  impatient  and  restless  under  the  long 
correspondence  with  the  Imperial  German 
Government  were  willing  to  acknowledge  that 
the  delay  was  justified;  that  at  last  the  nation 
was  solidly  behind  the  administration;  that 
amid  the  stirring  call  of  trumpets  partisanship 
would  be  forgotten;  and  that,  when  the  world 
was  made  safe  for  law  and  decency,  Mr.  Wilson 
would  find  himself  in  the  enjoyment  of  an  un 
paralleled  popularity.  It  did  not  seem  possible 
that  he  could  fail.  That  he  did  fail  of  these 

[243] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

hopes  and  expectations  is  not  a  matter  that 
any  true  lover  of  America  can  contemplate 
with  jubilation.  Those  of  us  who  ask  the  great 
est  and  the  best  things  of  and  for  America  can 
hardly  be  gratified  by  any  failure  that  might 
be  construed  as  a  sign  of  weakness  in  democ 
racy.  But  Mr.  Wilson's  inability  to  hold  the 
confidence  of  the  people,  to  win  his  adversaries 
to  his  standard,  to  implant  himself  in  the  affec 
tions  of  the  mass,  cannot  be  attributed  to  any 
thing  in  our  political  system  but  wholly  to  his 
own  nature.  It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  our  politi 
cal  life  that  a  man  like  Mr.  McKinley,  without 
distinguished  courage,  originality,  or  construc 
tive  genius,  is  able,  through  the  possession  of 
minor  qualities  that  are  social  rather  than 
political,  to  endear  himself  to  the  great  body  of 
his  countrymen.  It  may  be,  after  all  our  prayers 
for  great  men,  that  negative  rather  than  posi 
tive  qualities  are  the  safest  attributes  of  a  Presi 
dent. 

It  may  fairly  be  said  that  Mr.  Wilson  is  in 
tellectually  the  equal  of  most  of  his  predecessors 
in  the  presidency,  and  the  superior  of  a  very 
considerable  number  of  them.  The  very  con- 

[244] 


HOW,    THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

sciousness  of  the  perfect  functioning  of  his 
own  mental  machinery  made  him  intolerant  of 
stupidity,  and  impatient  of  the  criticism  of 
those  with  whom  it  has  been  necessary  for  him 
to  do  his  work,  who  have,  so  to  put  it,  only 
asked  to  be  "shown."  If  the  disagreeable  busi 
ness  of  working  in  practical  politics  in  all  its 
primary  branches  serves  no  better  purpose,  it 
at  least  exercises  a  humanizing  effect;  it  is  one 
way  of  learning  that  men  must  be  reasoned 
with  and  led,  not  driven.  In  escaping  the  usual 
political  apprenticeship,  Mr.  Wilson  missed 
wholly  the  liberalizing  and  broadening  con 
tacts  common  to  the  practical  politician.  At 
times — for  example,  when  the  Adamson  Law 
was  passed — I  heard  Republicans,  with  un 
flattering  intonation,  call  him  the  shrewdest 
politician  of  his  time;  but  nothing  could  be 
farther  from  the  truth.  Nominally  the  head 
of  his  party,  and  with  its  future  prosperity  in 
his  hands,  he  has  shown  a  curious  indifference 
to  the  maintenance  of  its  morale. 

"Produce  great  men;  the  rest  follows."  The 
production  of  great  men  is  not  so  easy  as  Whit 
man  imagined;  but  in  eight  tremendous  years 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

we  must  ruefully  confess  that  no  new  and  com 
manding  figure  has  risen  in  either  branch  of 
Congress.  Partisanship  constantly  to  the  fore, 
but  few  manifestations  of  statesmanship:  such 
is  the  record.  It  is  well-nigh  unbelievable  that, 
where  the  issues  have  so  constantly  touched 
the  very  life  of  the  nation,  the  discussions  could 
have  been  so  marked  by  narrowness  and 
bigotry.  The  exercise  of  autocratic  power  by  a 
group  pursuing  a  policy  of  frustration  and  ob 
struction  is  as  little  in  keeping  with  the  spirit 
of  our  institutions  as  a  stubborn,  uncompromis 
ing  course  on  the  part  of  the  executive.  The 
conduct  of  the  Republican  majority  in  the 
Senate  is  nothing  of  which  their  party  can  be 
proud. 

Four  years  ago  I  published  some  reflections 
on  the  low  state  to  which  the  public  service 
had  fallen,  and  my  views  have  not  been  changed 
by  more  recent  history.  It  would  be  manifestly 
unfair  to  lay  at  Mr.  Wilson's  door  the  inferiority 
of  the  men  elected  to  the  Congress;  but  with  all 
the  potentialities  of  party  leadership  and  his  sin 
gular  felicity  of  appeal,  he  has  done  little  to 
quicken  the  public  conscience  with  respect  to  the 

[246] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   FOTE? 

choice  of  administrators  or  representatives.  It 
may  be  said  in  his  defense  that  his  hours  from 
the  beginning  were  too  crowded  to  permit  such 
excursions  in  political  education;  but  we  had  a 
right  to  expect  him  to  lend  the  weight  of  his 
authoritative  voice  and  example  to  the  eleva 
tion  of  the  tone  of  the  public  service.  Poise 
and  serenity  of  temper  we  admire,  but  not  to 
the  point  where  it  seemingly  vanishes  into 
indifference  and  a  callousness  to  criticism.  The 
appeal  two  years  ago  for  a  Democratic  Con 
gress,  that  the  nation's  arm  might  be  strength 
ened  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  was  a  gra 
tuitous  slap  at  the  Republican  representatives 
who  had  supported  his  war  policies,  and  an 
affront  to  the  public  intelligence,  that  met  with 
just  rebuke.  The  cavalier  discharge  of  Lansing 
and  the  retention  of  Burleson  show  an  equally 
curious  inability  to  grasp  public  opinion. 


The  whole  handling  of  the  League  of  Na 
tions  was  bungled,  as  most  of  the  Democrats 
I  know  privately  admit.  The  end  of  a  war  that 

[247] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

had  shaken  the  very  foundations  of  the  earth 
was  a  fitting  time  to  attempt  the  formation 
of  an  association  of  the  great  powers  to  en 
force  the  peaceful  settlement  of  international 
disputes.  Here  was  a  matter  that  spoke  power 
fully  to  the  conscience  and  the  imagination, 
and  in  the  chastened  mood  of  a  war-weary 
world  it  seemed  a  thing  possible  of  achieve 
ment.  Certainly,  in  so  far  as  America  was  con 
cerned,  it  was  a  project  to  be  approached  in 
such  manner  that  its  success  could  in  no  way 
be  jeopardized  by  partisanship.  The  possibility 
of  opposition  by  Democratic  senators,  the 
hostility  of  Republican  senators,  which  was 
not  merely  partisan  but  in  certain  quarters 
tinged  with  bitter  personal  hatred  of  the  Presi 
dent,  was  to  be  anticipated  and  minimized. 

The  President's  two  trips  abroad  were  a 
mistake,  at  least  in  that  they  encouraged  those 
of  his  critics  who  assailed  him  as  an  autocrat 
and  supreme  egotist  stubbornly  bent  upon 
doing  the  whole  business  in  his  own  way.  The 
nation  was  entitled  to  the  services  in  the  peace 
negotiations  of  its  best  talent — men  strongly 
established  in  public  confidence.  Mr.  Wilson 

[248] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

paid  dearly  for  his  inability  to  recognize  this. 
His  own  appearance  at  Versailles  conveyed  a 
false  impression  of  his  powers,  and  the  effect 
at  home  was  to  cause  uneasiness  among  many 
who  had  most  cordially  supported  him. 

The  hovering  figure  of  Colonel  House  has 
been  a  constant  irritation  to  a  public  unin 
formed  as  to  the  training  or  experience  that 
set  him  apart  for  preferment.  In  sending  from 
the  homebound  ship  an  invitation  to  the  august 
Foreign  Relations  committee  to  gather  at  the 
White  House  at  an  hour  appointed  and  hear 
the  good  news  that  a  league  was  in  prospect, 
the  President  once  more  displayed  a  lamentable 
ignorance  of  human  nature.  His  attitude  was  a 
trifle  too  much  like  that  of  a  parent  returning 
from  a  journey  and  piquing  the  curiosity  of  his 
household  by  a  message  conveying  the  glad 
tidings  that  he  was  bringing  presents  for  their 
delight.  There  are  one  hundred  millions  of  us, 
and  we  are  not  to  be  managed  in  this  way. 

Colonel  Roosevelt  might  have  done  precisely 
these  things  and  "got  away  with  it."  Many 
thousands  would  have  said  it  was  just  like  him, 
and  applauded.  The  effect  of  Mr.  Wilson's 

[249] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

course  was  to  precipitate  a  prolonged  battle 
over  the  league  and  leave  it  high  in  the  air. 
It  hovers  over  the  present  campaign  like  a  toy 
balloon  floating  within  reach  of  languid  and 
indifferent  spectators.  In  that  part  of  the  coun 
try  with  whose  feelings  and  temper  on  public 
matters  I  may  pretend  to  some  knowledge,  I 
do  not  believe  that  any  one  cares  greatly  about 
it.  The  moment  it  became  a  partisan  question, 
it  lost  its  vitality  as  a  moral  issue  that  promised 
peace  and  security  to  America  and  all  the  world. 
Our  attitude  with  respect  to  the  league  has 
added  nothing  to  the  nation's  dignity;  rather, 
by  our  wabbly  course  in  this  matter  we  have 
done  much  to  weaken  the  case  for  world  democ 
racy.  Its  early  acceptance,  with  reservations 
that  would  have  stilled  the  cry  of  denationali 
zation,  would  have  made  it  an  achievement 
on  which  the  Democratic  party  might  have 
gone  to  the  people  with  satisfaction  and  con 
fidence.  Even  considered  as  an  experiment  of 
dubious  practicability,  it  would  have  been 
defensible  at  least  as  an  honest  attempt  to 
blunt  the  sword  of  the  war  god.  The  spirit  in 
which  we  associated  ourselves  with  the  other 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   FOTE? 

powers  that  resisted  the  Kaiser's  attempt  to 
bestride  the  world  like  a  Colossus  needed  for 
its  complete  expression  the  further  effort  to 
make  a  repetition  of  the  gigantic  struggle  im 
possible. 

As  a  people  we  are  strongly  aroused  and 
our  imagination  quickened  by  anything  that 
may  be  viewed  in  a  glow  of  spirituality;  and  a 
scheme  of  peace  insurance  already  in  operation 
would  have  proved  a  dangerous  thing  to  at 
tack.  But  the  league's  moral  and  spiritual  as 
pects  have  been  marred  or  lost.  The  patience 
of  the  people  has  been  exhausted  by  the  long 
debate  about  it,  and  the  pettiness  and  insin 
cerity,  the  contemptible  evasion  and  hair 
splitting,  that  have  marked  the  controversy 
over  what  is,  in  its  purpose  and  aim,  a  crystal 
lization  of  the  hope  of  mankind  in  all  the  ages. 
Such  a  league  might  fail;  certainly  its  chance 
of  success  is  vastly  decreased  by  America's 
refusal  to  participate. 

VI 

In  the  cool  airs  of  the  North  Smith  and  I 
have  honestly  tried  to  reduce  the  league  situa- 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

tion  to  intelligible  terms.  Those  voters  who 
may  feel  constrained  to  regard  the  election  as 
a  referendum  of  the  league  will  do  well  to  fol 
low  our  example  in  pondering  the  speeches  of 
acceptance  of  the  two  candidates.  Before  these 
words  are  read  both  Governor  Cox  and  Sena 
tor  Harding  will  doubtless  have  amplified  their 
original  statements,  but  these  are  hardly  sus 
ceptible  of  misinterpretation  as  they  stand. 
Mr.  Harding's  utterance  is  in  effect  a  motion 
to  lay  on  the  table,  to  defer  action  to  a  more 
convenient  season,  and  take  it  up  de  novo.  Gov 
ernor  Cox,  pledging  his  support  to  the  proposi 
tion,  calls  for  the  question.  Mr.  Harding  de 
fines  his  position  thus: 

With  a  Senate  advising,  as  the  Constitution  contem 
plates,  I  would  hopefully  approach  the  nations  of  Europe 
and  of  the  earth,  proposing  that  understanding  which 
makes  us  a  willing  participant  in  the  consecration  of  na 
tions  to  a  new  relationship,  to  commit  the  moral  forces 
of  the  world,  America  included,  to  peace  and  interna 
tional  justice,  still  leaving  America  free,  independent, 
and  self-reliant,  but  offering  friendship  to  all  the  world. 

If  men  call  for  more  specific  details,  I  remind  them 
that  moral  committals  are  broad  and  all-inclusive,  and 
we  are  contemplating  peoples  in  the  concord  of  humanity's 

[252] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

advancement.  From  our  own  view-point  the  programme 
is  specifically  American,  and  we  mean  to  be  American 
first,  to  all  the  world. 

Mr.  Cox  says,  "I  favor  going  in";  and  meets 
squarely  the  criticism  that  the  Democratic 
platform  is  not  explicit  as  to  reservations.  He 
would  "state  our  interpretations  of  the  Cove 
nant  as  a  matter  of  good  faith  to  our  associates 
and  as  a  precaution  against  any  misunder 
standing  in  the  future,"  and  quotes  from  an 
article  of  his  own,  published  in  the  New  York 
Times  before  his  nomination,  these  words: 

In  giving  its  assent  to  this  treaty,  the  Senate  has  in 
mind  the  fact  that  the  League  of  Nations  which  it  em 
bodies  was  devised  for  the  sole  purpose  of  maintaining 
peace  and  comity  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  and 
preventing  the  recurrence  of  such  destructive  conflicts 
as  that  through  which  the  world  has  just  passed.  The 
co-operation  of  the  United  States  with  the  league,  and 
its  continuance  as  a  member  thereof,  will  naturally  de 
pend  upon  the  adherence  of  the  league  to  that  funda 
mental  purpose. 

He  proposes  an  addition  to  the  Covenant 
of  some  such  paragraph  as  this: 

It  will,  of  course,  be  understood  that,  in  carrying  out 
the  purpose  of  the  league,  the  government  of  the  United 

[253] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

States  must  at  all  times  act  in  strict  harmony  with  the 
terms  and  intent  of  the  United  States  Constitution,  which 
cannot  in  any  way  be  altered  by  the  treaty-making  power. 

There  is  no  echo  here  of  the  President's  un 
compromising  declaration  that  the  Covenant 
must  be  accepted  precisely  as  he  presented  it. 
To  the  lay  mind  there  is  no  discernible  differ 
ence  between  a  reservation  and  an  interpreta 
tion,  when  the  sole  purpose  in  either  case  would 
be  to  make  it  clear  to  the  other  signatories, 
through  the  text  of  the  instrument  itself,  that 
we  could  bind  ourselves  in  no  manner  that 
transcended  the  Constitution. 

Smith  is  endowed  with  a  talent  for  condensa 
tion,  and  I  cheerfully  quote  the  result  of  his 
cogitations  on  the  platforms  and  the  speeches 
of  the  candidates.  "The  Republican  senators 
screamed  for  reservations,  but  when  Hiram 
Johnson  showed  symptoms  of  kicking  out  of  the 
traces  they  pretended  that  they  never  wanted 
the  league  at  all.  But  to  save  their  faces  they 
said  maybe  some  time  when  the  sky  was  high 
and  they  were  feeling  good  they  would  shuffle 
the  deck  and  try  a  new  deal.  Cox  is  for  playing 
the  game  right  through  on  the  present  layout. 

[254] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

If  you're  keen  for  the  League  of  Nations,  your 
best  chance  of  ever  seeing  America  sign  up  is 
to  stand  on  Cox's  side  of  the  table." 

Other  Smiths,  not  satisfied  with  his  analysis, 
and  groping  in  the  dark,  may  be  grateful  for 
the  leading  hand  of  Mr.  Taft.  The  former  Presi 
dent  was,  in  his  own  words,  "one  of  the  small 
group  who,  in  1915,  began  the  movement  in 
this  country  for  the  League  of  Nations  and 
the  participation  of  the  United  States  therein." 
Continuing,  he  said,  in  the  Philadelphia  Ledger 
of  August  i : 

Had  I  been  in  the  Senate,  I  would  have  voted  for  the 
league  and  treaty  as  submitted;  and  I  advocated  its 
ratification  accordingly.  I  did  not  think  and  do  not  now 
think  that  anything  in  the  League  Covenant  as  sent  to 
the  Senate  would  violate  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  or  would  involve  us  in  wars  which  it  would  not 
be  to  the  highest  interest  of  the  world  and  this  country 
to  suppress  by  universal  boycott  and,  if  need  be,  by  mili 
tary  force. 

In  response  to  a  question  whether,  this  being 
his  feeling,  he  would  not  support  Mr.  Cox, 
Mr.  Taft  made  this  reply: 

No  such  issue  as  the  ratification  of  the  League  of  Na 
tions  as  submitted  can  possibly  be  settled  in  the  coming 

[255] 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  STREET 

election.  Only  one-third  of  the  Senate  is  to  be  elected, 
and  but  fifteen  Republican  senators  out  of  forty-nine 
can  be  changed.  There  remain  in  the  Senate,  whatever 
the  result  of  the  election,  thirty-three  Republicans  who 
have  twice  voted  against  the  ratification  of  the  league 
without  the  Lodge  reservations.  Of  the  fifteen  retiring 
Republicans,  many  are  certain  of  re-election.  Thirty-three 
votes  will  defeat  the  league. 

Smith,  placidly  fishing,  made  the  point  that 
a  man  who  believed  in  a  thing  would  vote  for 
it  even  though  it  was  a  sure  loser,  and  asked 
where  a  Democratic  landslide  would  leave 
Mr.  Tart.  When  I  reminded  him  that  he  had 
drifted  out  of  the  pellucid  waters  of  political 
discussion  and  snagged  the  boat  on  a  moral 
question,  he  became  peevish  and  refused  to 
fish  any  more  that  day. 

The  league  is  the  paramount  issue,  or  it  is 
not;  you  can  take  it,  or  leave  it  alone.  The 
situation  may  be  wholly  changed  when  Mr. 
Root,  to  whom  the  Republican  league  plank 
is  attributed,  reports  the  result  of  his  labors 
in  organizing  the  international  court  of  arbi 
tration.  Some  new  proposal  for  an  association 
of  nations  to  promote  or  enforce  peace  would 

[2561 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH  VOTE? 

be  of  undoubted  benefit  to  the  Republicans 
in  case  they  find  their  negative  position  difficult 
to  maintain. 

The  platforms  and  speeches  of  acceptance 
present,  as  to  other  matters,  nothing  over  which 
neighbors  need  quarrel.  As  to  retrenchment, 
labor,  taxation,  and  other  questions  of  imme 
diate  and  grave  concern,  the  promises  of  both 
candidates  are  fair  enough.  They  both  clearly 
realize  that  we  have  entered  upon  a  period 
that  is  likely  to  witness  a  strong  pressure  for 
modifications  of  our  social  and  political  struc 
ture.  Radical  sentiment  has  been  encouraged, 
or  at  least  tolerated,  in  a  disturbing  degree  by 
the  present  administration.  However,  there  is 
nothing  in  Mr.  Cox's  record  as  governor  or  in 
his  expressed  views  to  sustain  any  suspicion 
that  he  would  temporize  with  the  forces  of 
destruction.  The  business  of  democracy  is  to 
build,  not  to  destroy;  to  help,  not  to  hinder. 
We  have  from  both  candidates  much  the 
same  assurances  of  sympathy  with  the  position 
held  nowadays  by  all  straight-thinking  men 
— that  industrial  peace,  concord,  and  content 
ment  can  be  maintained  only  by  fair  deal- 

[257] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

ing  and  good-will  among  all  of  us  for  the  good 
of  all. 

From  their  public  utterances  and  other  testi 
mony  we  are  not  convinced  that  either  candi 
date  foreshadows  a  stalwart  Saul  striding  across 
the  hills  on  his  way  to  the  leadership  of  Israel. 
Mr.  Harding  shows  more  poise — more  caution 
and  timidity,  if  you  will;  Mr.  Cox  is  a  more 
alert  and  forthright  figure,  far  likelier  to  strike 
" straight  at  the  grinning  Teeth  of  Things." 
He  is  also  distinctly  less  careful  of  his  speech. 
He  reminds  the  Republicans  that  "McKinley 
broke  the  fetters  of  our  boundary  lines,  spoke 
of  the  freedom  of  Cuba,  and  carried  the  torch 
of  American  idealism  to  the  benighted  Philip- 
pines" — a  proud  boast  that  must  have  pained 
Mr.  Bryan.  In  the  same  paragraph  of  his  speech 
of  acceptance  we  are  told  that  "Lincoln  fought 
a  war  on  the  purely  moral  question  of  slavery"- 
a  statement  that  must  ring  oddly  in  the  ears 
of  Southerners  brought  up  in  the  belief  that 
the  South  fought  in  defense  of  State  sover 
eignty.  These  may  not  be  inadvertences,  but 
a  courageous  brushing  away  of  old  litter;  he 
is  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 

[258] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

VII 

Smith  rose  from  his  morning  dip  with  the 
joyful  countenance  of  a  diver  who  has  found 
a  rare  pearl.  We  were  making  progress,  he  said; 
he  thought  he  had  got  hold  of  what  he  called 
the  God's  truth  of  the  whole  business.  What 
those  fellows  did  at  Chicago  and  San  Francisco 
was  to  cut  the  barbed-wire  entanglements  in 
No  Man's  Land,  so  that  it  doesn't  make  much 
difference  on  which  side  of  the  battle-line  we 
find  ourselves  on  election  day.  The  parties 
have  unwittingly  flung  a  challenge  to  the  in 
dependent  voter.  An  extraordinary  opportunity 
is  presented  to  citizens  everywhere  to  scrutinize 
with  unusual  care  their  local  tickets  and  vote 
for  the  candidates  who  promise  the  best  ser 
vice.  As  Smith  put  it,  we  ought  to  be  able  to 
scramble  things  a  good  deal.  Keep  the  bosses 
guessing:  this  he  offered  as  a  good  slogan  for 
the  whole  Smith  family.  In  our  own  Indiana 
we  would  pick  and  choose,  registering,  of  course, 
our  disapproval  of  Senator  Watson  as  a  post 
graduate  of  the  Penrose  school,  and  voting 
for  a  Democrat  for  governor  because  Governor 

[259] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

Goodrich's  administration  has  been  a  con 
tinuous  vaudeville  of  error  and  confusion,  and 
the  Democratic  candidate,  a  gentleman  hereto 
fore  unknown  in  politics,  talks  common  sense 
in  folksy  language. 

We  finally  concluded  as  to  the  presidency 
that  it  came  down  to  a  choice  of  men  tested 
by  their  experience,  public  acts,  and  the  in 
fluences  behind  them.  The  imperative  demand 
is  for  an  efficient  administration  of  the  federal 
government.  The  jobs  must  be  given  to  big 
men  of  demonstrated  capacity.  Undoubtedly 
Mr.  Harding  would  have  a  larger  and  more 
promising  field  to  draw  upon.  If  it  were  pos 
sible  for  Mr.  Cox  to  break  a  precedent  and 
state  with  the  frankness  of  which  he  seems 
capable  the  order  of  men  he  would  assemble 
for  his  counsellors  and  administrators,  he  would 
quiet  an  apprehension  that  is  foremost  in  the 
minds  of  an  innumerable  company  of  hesitat 
ing  voters.  Fear  of  continuance  of  Mr.  Wilson's 
indulgent  policy  toward  mediocrity  and  a  repe 
tition  of  his  refusal  to  seek  the  best  help  the 
nation  offered  (until  compelled  to  call  upon 
the  expert  dollar-a-year  man  to  meet  the  exigen- 

[260] 


HOW,  THEN,  SHOULD  SMITH   VOTE? 

cies  of  war)  is  not  a  negligible  factor  in  this 
campaign,  and  Mr.  Cox,  if  he  is  wise,  will  not 
ignore  it. 

The  manner  of  Mr.  Harding's  nomination 
by  the  senatorial  cabal,  whose  influence  upon 
his  administration  is  hardly  a  speculative  mat 
ter,  invites  the  consideration  of  progressive 
Republicans  who  rankle  under  two  defeats 
fairly  chargeable  to  reactionary  domination. 
It  was  apparent  at  Chicago  that  the  Old  Guard 
had  learned  nothing  and  would  risk  a  third 
consecutive  defeat  rather  than  accept  any 
candidate  not  of  their  choosing.  Mr.  Harding's 
emphasis  upon  his  belief  in  party  government, 
as  distinguished  from  personal  government— 
obviously  a  slap  at  Mr.  Wilson — is  susceptible 
of  an  unfortunate  interpretation,  as  Mr.  Cox 
was  quick  to  see.  If  the  Republican  candidate 
means  submission  to  organization  chiefs,  or  to 
such  a  group  as  now  controls  the  Senate  and 
the  party,  his  declaration  is  not  reassuring. 

If  Smith,  in  his  new  mood  of  independence, 
votes  for  Mr.  Cox,  and  I,  not  a  little  bitter 
that  my  party  in  these  eight  years  has  failed 
to  meet  my  hopes  for  it,  vote  for  Mr.  Harding, 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

which  of  us,  I  wonder,  will  the  better  serve 
America  ? 

With  renewed  faith  and  hope  we  packed  our 
belongings  and  made  ready  for  our  return  to 
the  world  of  men.  Having  settled  the  nation's 
affairs,  and  being  on  good  terms  with  our  con 
sciences,  we  turned  for  a  last  look  at  the  camp 
before  embarking.  Smith  took  the  platforms 
and  the  speeches  of  acceptance  of  the  candi 
dates  for  President  and  Vice-President  of  the 
United  States,  affixed  them  firmly  to  a  stone, 
and  consigned  them  without  ceremony  to  the 
deep.  The  fish  had  been  naughty,  he  said,  and 
he  wanted  to  punish  them  for  their  bad  man 
ners. 


[262 


THE  POOR  OLD  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

IN  the  whole  range  of  human  endeavor  no 
department  is  so  hospitable  to  the  ama 
teur    as    education.    Here    the   gates    are 
always  open.  Wide  is  the  field  and  many  are 
the  fools  who  disport  therein. 

Politics  we  are  all  too  prone  to  forget  be 
tween  campaigns;  literature  and  the  graphic 
arts  engage  only  our  languid  attention  and 
science  interests  us  only  when  our  imaginations 
are  mightily  stirred.  But  we  all  know  how  the 
young  idea  should  be  taught  to  shoot.  We  are 
either  reactionaries,  lamenting  the  good  old 
times  of  the  three  rs  and  the  little  red  school- 
house,  or  we  discuss  with  much  gravity  such 
weighty  problems  as  the  extension  or  curtail 
ment  of  the  elective  system,  or  we  fly  to  the 
defense  or  demolition  of  the  ideas  of  Dewey 
and  other  reformers.  It  is  folly  not  to  hold 
opinions  where  no  one  is  sure  of  anything  and 
every  one  is  free  to  strut  in  the  silken  robes  of 
wisdom.  Many  of  us  receive  at  times  flattering 
invitations  to  express  opinions  touching  the 

[263] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

education  of  our  youth.  Though  my  own  school 
ing  was  concluded  at  the  algebra  age,  owing 
to  an  inherent  inability  to  master  that  subject 
or  even  comprehend  what  it  was  all  about,  I 
have  not  scrupled  to  contribute  to  educational 
symposia  at  every  opportunity.  Perhaps  I 
answer  the  riddles  of  the  earnest  critics  of  edu 
cation  the  more  cheerfully  from  the  very  fact 
of  my  benightedness.  When  the  doors  are  closed 
and  the  potent,  grave,  and  reverend  signiors 
go  into  committee  of  the  whole  to  determine 
why  education  does  not  indeed  educate — there, 
in  such  a  company,  I  am  not  only  an  eager 
listener  but,  with  the  slightest  encouragement, 
I  announce  and  defend  my  opinions. 

Millions  are  expended  every  year  for  the 
public  enlightenment,  and  yet  no  one  is  satis 
fied  either  with  the  method  or  the  result.  Some 
one  is  always  trying  to  do  something  for  cul 
ture.  It  seems  at  times  that  the  efforts  of  the 
women  of  America  to  increase  the  remnant 
that  is  amiably  disposed  toward  sweetness  and 
light  cannot  fail,  so  many  and  so  zealous  are 
the  organizations  in  which  they  band  them 
selves  for  this  laudable  purpose.  A  little  while 

[264] 


THE  POOR  OLD  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

ago  we  had  a  nation-wide  better-English  week 
to  encourage  respect  among  the  youth  of  this 
jazzy  age  for  the  poor  old  English  language. 

I  shall  express  without  apology  my  opinion 
that  in  these  free  States  we  are  making  no 
marked  headway  in  the  attempt  to  improve 
spoken  or  written  English.  Hardly  a  day  passes 
that  I  do  not  hear  graduates  of  colleges  confuse 
their  pronouns;  evil  usages  are  as  common  as 
the  newspapers.  And  yet  grammar  and  rhetoric 
are  taught  more  or  less  intelligently  by  a  vast 
army  of  overworked  and  underpaid  teachers, 
according  to  the  text-books  fashioned  by 
specialists  who  really  do  try  to  make  them 
selves  intelligible. 

My  attitude  toward  this  whole  perplexing 
business  is  one  of  the  greatest  tolerance.  I  doubt 
seriously  whether  I  could  pass  an  examination 
in  English  grammar.  A  Japanese  waiter  in  a 
club  in  my  town  used  to  lie  in  wait  for  me, 
when  I  visited  the  house  at  odd  hours  in  search 
of  seclusion,  for  the  purpose  of  questioning  me 
as  to  certain  perplexing  problems  in  grammar. 
He  had  flatteringly  chosen  me  from  the  club 
roster  as  a  lettered  person,  and  it  was  with 

[265] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

astonishment  that  he  heard  my  embarrassed 
confession  that  I  shared  his  bewilderment.  To 
any  expert  grammarians  who,  inspired  by  this 
revelation,  begin  a  laborious  investigation  of 
these  pages  in  pursuit  of  errors,  I  can  only  say 
that  I  wish  them  good  luck  in  their  adventure. 
At  times  I  do  manifestly  stumble,  and  occa 
sionally  the  blunder  is  grievous.  A  poem  of 
my  authorship  once  appeared  in  a  periodical 
of  the  most  exacting  standards  with  a  singular 
noun  mated  to  a  plural  verb.  For  proof-readers 
as  a  class  I  entertain  the  greatest  veneration. 
Often  a  query  courteously  noted  on  the  margin 
of  a  galley  has  prevented  a  violence  to  my 
mother  tongue  which  I  would  not  consciously 
inflict  upon  it. 

To  add  to  the  fury  of  the  grammar  hounds, 
I  will  state  that  at  times  in  my  life  I  have  been 
able  to  read  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  and  French 
without  ever  knowing  anything  about  the 
grammar  of  either  of  these  languages  beyond 
what  I  worked  out  for  myself  as  I  went  along. 
This  method  or  lack  of  method  is  not,  I  be 
lieve,  original  with  me,  for  there  are,  or  have 
been,  inductive  methods  of  teaching  foreign 
[266] 


THE  POOR  OLD  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

languages  which  set  the  student  at  once  to 
reading  and  made  something  rather  incidental 
of  the  grammar.  This  is  precisely  what  I  should 
do  with  English  if  I  were  responsible  for  the 
instruction  of  children  at  the  age  when  it  is 
the  fashion  to  begin  hammering  grammar  into 
their  inhospitable  minds.  Ignorant  of  grammar 
myself,  but  having — if  I  may  assume  so  much— 
an  intuitive  sense  of  the  proper  and  effective 
manner  of  shaping  sentences,  there  would  be 
no  text-books  in  my  schoolroom.  All  principals, 
trustees,  inspectors,  and  educational  reformers 
would  be  excluded  from  my  classes,  and  I 
should  insist  on  protection  from  physical  mani 
festations  of  their  indignation  on  my  way  to 
and  from  the  schoolhouse.  The  first  weeks  of 
my  course  would  be  purely  conversational. 
I  should  test  the  students  for  their  vulgarities 
and  infelicities,  and  such  instances,  registered 
on  the  blackboard,  would  visualize  the  errors 
as  long  as  necessary.  The  reading  of  indubitably 
good  texts  in  class  would,  of  course,  be  part 
of  the  programme,  and  the  Bible  I  should  use 
freely,  particularly  drawing  upon  the  Old  Testa 
ment  narratives. 

[267] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE  STREET 

I  should  endeavor  to  make  it  appear  that 
clean  and  accurate  speech  is  a  part  of  good 
manners,  an  important  item  in  the  general 
equipment  for  life.  When  it  came  to  writing, 
I  should  begin  with  the  familiar  letter,  leaving 
the  choice  of  subject  to  the  student.  These 
compositions,  read  in  the  class,  would  be  criti 
cised,  as  far  as  possible,  by  the  students  them 
selves.  I  should  efface  myself  completely  as 
an  instructor  and  establish  the  relation  of 
a  fellow-seeker  intent  upon  finding  the  best 
way  of  saying  a  thing.  If  there  were  usages 
that  appeared  to  be  common  to  a  neighbor 
hood,  or  intrusions  of  dialect  peculiar  to  a 
State  or  a  section,  I  might  search  out  and  de 
scribe  their  origin,  but  if  they  were  flavorsome 
and  truly  of  the  soil  I  should  not  discourage 
their  use.  Self-consciousness  in  these  early 
years  is  to  be  avoided.  The  weaknesses  of  the 
individual  student  are  only  discernible  where 
he  is  permitted  to  speak  and  write  without 
timidity. 

When  a  youngster  is  made  to  understand 
from  a  concrete  example  that  a  sentence  is 
badly  constructed,  or  that  it  is  marred  by  a 

[268] 


THE  POOR  OLD  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

weak  word  or  a  word  used  out  of  its  true  sense, 
the  rules  governing  such  instances  may  be 
brought  to  his  attention  with  every  confidence 
that  he  will  understand  their  point.  My  work 
would  be  merely  a  preparation  for  the  teach 
ing  of  grammar,  if  grammar  there  must  be; 
but  I  should  resent  such  instruction  if  my  suc 
cessor  failed  to  relate  my  work  to  his. 

I  consider  the  memorizing  of  short  passages 
of  verse  and  prose  an  important  adjunct  to 
the  teaching  of  English  by  any  method.  "Learn 
it  by  heart "  seems  to  have  gone  out  of  fashion 
in  late  years.  I  have  recently  sat  in  classes  and 
listened  to  the  listless  reading,  paragraph  by 
paragraph,  of  time-honored  classics,  knowing 
well  that  the  students  were  getting  nothing  out 
of  them.  The  more  good  English  the  student  car 
ries  in  his  head  the  likelier  he  is  to  gain  a  re 
spect  for  his  language  and  a  confidence  and 
effectiveness  in  speaking  and  writing  it. 

Let  the  example  precede  the  rule !  If  there 
is  any  sense  in  the  rule  the  example  will  clarify 
it;  if  it  is  without  justification  and  designed 
merely  to  befuddle  the  student,  then  it  ought 
to  be  abolished  anyhow.  The  idea  that  chil- 

[269] 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   STREET 

dren  should  be  seen  and  not  heard  belongs  to 
the  period  when  it  was  believed  that  to  spare 
the  rod  was  to  spoil  the  child.  Children  should 
be  encouraged  to  talk,  to  observe  and  to  de 
scribe  the  things  that  interest  them  in  the 
course  of  the  day.  In  this  way  they  will  form 
the  habit  of  the  intelligent  reporter  who,  on 
the  way  to  his  desk  from  an  assignment,  plans 
his  article,  eager  to  find  the  best  way  of  telling 
his  story.  Instead  of  making  a  hateful  mystery 
of  English  speech  it  should  be  made  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world,  worthy  of  the  ef 
fort  necessary  to  give  it  accuracy,  ease,  and 
charm. 

The  scraps  of  conversation  I  overhear  every 
day  in  elevators,  across  counters,  on  the  street, 
and  in  trolley-cars  are  of  a  nature  to  disturb 
those  who  view  with  complacency  the  great 
treasure  we  pour  into  education.  The  trouble 
with  our  English  is  that  too  much  is  taught 
and  not  enough  is  learned.  The  child  is  stuffed, 
not  fed.  Rules  crammed  into  him  for  his  gui 
dance  in  self-expression  are  imperfectly  assimi 
lated.  They  never  become  a  part  of  him.  His 
first  contacts  with  grammar  arouse  his  hostility, 

[270] 


THE  POOR  OLD  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

and  seeing  no  sense  in  it  he  casts  it  aside  with 
the  disdain  he  would  manifest  for  a  mechani 
cal  toy  that  refused  to  work  in  the  manner 
promised  by  the  advertisement. 


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